The Atom was Puma's first football boot. A Puma press text quoted by the German Sport and Olympic Museum says Rudolf Dassler began developing new football boots in 1948, just after founding the company, aiming for a boot that would work in any weather and on any ground, and brought the Atom to market in 1948–49.
The museum's example, made in Herzogenaurach, is a leather boot with nailed-on twin studs of the Vorwerk type, with a sole 29.7 centimetres long. It was worn when West Germany returned to international football: on 22 November 1950 Herbert Burdenski scored the country's first post-war goal, and the winner, against Switzerland in Atoms. Puma's timeline describes the boot as a major success.
Its successor, the Super Atom of 1952, replaced the nailed studs with screw-in ones, developed with West Germany's national coach Sepp Herberger. That boot started Puma's long history in football, which runs on through the King.