View allAll Photos Tagged manhattanproject
they gathered from across the land
to work in the secrecy of the desert sand...
Explore #332 on Thursday, May 15, 2008
I was visiting with my Dad and I was taking a few pictures. He said, “I hope you’re not taking any pictures of me. I’m just wearing my pajamas.” Later, when I showed him this picture, he said, “My God, nobody has ever taken a picture of me, like that. It looks as though I’m really sitting there. "You are, Dad", I said. Many decades earlier in his life, he was in Oak Ridge, TN, as part of the “Manhattan Project” when they made the Atomic Bomb, beginning in 1942. He greatly regretted that.
By the way, this is NOT the phone company. See if you can figure out what this place was and the function these women performed. It's actually a very obscure part of American History.
With the new Biopic "Oppenheimer" coming to most theaters today I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the Trinity Device aka known as The Gadget the output product of The Manhattan Project. Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT (11:29:21 GMT) on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project with a yield of energy equivalent to 24.8 ± 2 kilotons of TNT.
After the successful test Oppenheimer is said to have quoted a passage from the Hindu scripture, the "Bhagavad Gita;" "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
This inert model of the Trinity Device is located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.
This is how stupid and reckless mankind actually is:
In her feature, the author Pearl S. Buck recalls a conversation she had with Compton about his conversation with Oppenheimer during the Manhattan Project:
"Hydrogen nuclei," Arthur Compton explained to me, "are unstable, and they can combine into helium nuclei with a large release of energy, as they do on the sun. To set off such a reaction would require a very high temperature, but might not the enormously high temperature of the atomic bomb be just what was needed to explode hydrogen?
"And if hydrogen, what about hydrogen in sea water? Might not the explosion of the atomic bomb set off an explosion of the ocean itself? Nor was this all that Oppenheimer feared. The nitrogen in the air is also unstable, though in less degree. Might not it, too, be set off by an atomic explosion in the atmosphere?"
"The earth would be vaporized," I said.
"Exactly," Compton said, and with that gravity! "It would be the ultimate catastrophe. Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run the chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind!"
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Lawsy!
A photo taken overlooking the Atomic Bomb Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Hiroshima is a completely emotionally moving city,the constant reminder of the past and potential future is daunting.
Control Room for the Manhattan Project B Reactor at the Hanford Site. Hanford, WA.
Captured on Ilford XP2 Super 400 film using an Olympus Pen EES-2 half-frame camera.
Nature and Industry.
Looking out at the Columbia River. Across the way is the 300 Area of Hanford, a Manhattan Project site, now used by the national laboratory system.
This area of the river used to be a glacial lake (16-20,000 yrs ago) with the distant ridges in the background here existing as islands.
I have not seen the movie Oppenheimer, but this in one of my favorite Rush songs from Power Windows:
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say
Song: Manhattan Project
Artist: Rush
Theme: Give Me A Line
Year Seventeen Of My 365 Project
On July 16, 1945, Jack Aeby took the only properly exposed color photographs of the Trinity test explosion with this 35mm Perflex 33 camera. Color motion film exposed during the test was badly overexposed or damaged due to the fireball's blister and solarizing the film. Oct. 9, 2024: Visit Los Alamos, New Mexico, the World War II Manhattan Project site to build the atomic bomb. Rt66/2024/47
Richland, WA remembers the beginning of the Manhattan Project, 75 years ago. Music and dancing in the park recall the 40s and 50s.
Of course, on the flip side, there's this: www.flickr.com/photos/22298775@N05/40600214624/in/album-7...
Replica of the first nuclear device detonated in the Trinity Test as a part of the Manhattan Project. The Gadget's detonation produced the explosive power of about 20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ). After witnessing the detonation J. Robert Oppenheimer was said to have lamented, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," a verse from the Bhagavad Gita. History has shown the quote to be quite appropriate.
Hill Air Force Base, Weber County, Utah.
For the 78th anniversary of its detonation, a photo of a scale model of the "Gadget" in the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque. It was fired at the "Trinity Site" in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico.
Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell was bewildered by how “the whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined. It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately.”
After being closed to the public for many years, the Trinity Site was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. It is now open to visitors on the first Saturdays of April and October.
Inscription on the above historical marker:
As a part of the Manhattan Project, the K-25 plant was designed to house work on separating U-235 from U-238 through the gaseous diffusion process. At the time of its construction, it was the largest industrial complex in history. Plant construction began in 1943 and was completed in 1945. Over 25,000 construction personnel worked on this plant. The main building exceeded 44 acres in size.
In 1942, nearly 60,000 acres of East Tennessee landscape became part of the most significant defense strategy in the history of the United States – the Manhattan Project, a massive wartime effort shrouded in complete secrecy – to the point that most of the K-25 workers did not even know what they were building! Their mission: build the first atomic weapon before Nazi Germany and end World War II. To ensure victory, secrecy was paramount. No one could know of Oak Ridge. No one could know the purpose of the plants. Isolation was key. At the western-most boundary of the military’s new reservation, the war effort engulfed the tiny Wheat Community (population 1,000) replacing farmhouses and fruit trees with massive concrete and steel structures that would produce the world’s first enriched uranium. By September 1943, construction had begun on a two-million-square-foot plant known as K-25. (“K-25” was a codename made up of a combination of other codes. The letter “K” comes from “Kellex”, M.W. Kellogg’s (the lead engineer) codename, “Kell” for Kellogg, and “X” for secret. The number “25” is a World War II-era code designated for the element called uranium-235, the concentrated product of the gaseous diffusion process.) This plant would enrich uranium using the gaseous diffusion process. Ultimately, its product would fuel one of two atomic bombs that would end World War II (Little Boy used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima). After the war, the K-25 plant continued to serve the nation along with the addition of four more gaseous diffusion plants named K-27, K-29, K-31 and K-33 added to the site. The K-25 site was renamed the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in 1955. Production of enriched uranium ended in 1964, and gaseous diffusion finally ceased on the site on August 27, 1985. The Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant was renamed the Oak Ridge K-25 Site in 1989, and the East Tennessee Technology Park in 1996. Demolition of all five gaseous diffusion plants was completed in February 2017.
Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11
The best way to view my photostream is through Flickriver with the link below: www.flickriver.com/photos/photojourney57/
Looking more like the hallway in a mental hospital, this is a hallway in the former ALCOA Laboratory in New Kensington. While ALCOA was best known for making aluminum that was used in everything from pots & pans to aircraft, during WWII, ALCOA was also involved in the Manhattan Project, where they developed a welding process to encapsulate uranium 235 slugs in aluminum casings for use at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Built in 1928, historic Fuller Lodge served as the dining hall of the Los Alamos Ranch School until 1942 when it became the community center for Manhattan Project workers and still serves as a community center today. It is build from over 700 Ponderosa pine trees.
Subject: Wu, C. S (Chien-shiung) 1912-1997
Columbia University
Type: Black-and-white photographs
Topic: Physics
Women scientists
Local number: SIA Acc. 90-105 [SIA2010-1509]
Summary: In 1963, Chien-shiung Wu (1912-1997), professor of physics at Columbia University, was already considered one of the world's foremost experimental physicists. Her team's experiments had confirmed the theory of sub-atomic behavior known as "weak interaction
Cite as: Acc. 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archivess
Persistent URL:Link to data base record
Repository:Smithsonian Institution Archives
"Little Boy" was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the US Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare.
The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first detonation using uranium as its fuel; the design was considered so fundamentally sound that it was not tested before delivery. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT, causing significant destruction to the city of Hiroshima.
Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group of Captain William S Parsons's Ordnance (O) Division at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. Parsons flew on the Hiroshima mission as weaponeer. The Little Boy was a development of the unsuccessful Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon, but derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of U-235. This was accomplished by shooting a hollowed-out block of enriched uranium onto a solid cylinder of the same material by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder (blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2011/11/08/the-mysterious-design-...). It contained 64 kg of enriched uranium, of which less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission (so in technical terms could be considered quite inefficient!). Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design.
After the war ended, it was not expected that the Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed, but by mid-1946 the Hanford Site plutonium-production reactors were suffering technical problems, so six Little Boy assemblies were produced at Sandia Base. The Navy Bureau of Ordnance built another 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the Lockheed P2V Neptune nuclear strike aircraft (which could be launched from, but not land on, the Midway-class aircraft carriers). All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951.
The above casing, one of six still surviving, has been loaned by the US government to the Imperial War Museum in London, where it is seen at the entrance to their Peace and Security exhibit.
Like the national historical trails, Manhattan Project National Historical Park relies on partners to tell the story. That can be a good thing in that it opens up the story. It also gives the story over to non-park organizations with their own agendas.
What's the right balance?
These decomissioned nuclear reactors (left of center) are encased to isolate the long-lived nucleotides still within the core. The reactors were the source of the fissionable material used in the Manhattan Project at the end of World War II. The area is now a protected area of outstanding natural beauty.
This portrait of Professor Hans Bethe is displayed in Los Alamos. In those days, he was the head of the Manhattan Project's theoretical group. He was a Noble Prize winning physicist who determined the nuclear source of the sun's energy. The sun is mainly composed of hydrogen nuclei. Hans Bethe identified the process by which the sun synthesizes the elements of ascending atomic numbers greater than that of hydrogen. He showed it was based on a catalytic cycle involving nuclear elements up through carbon nuclei. I was fortunate to have him review my work in later years.
After I received my Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from M.I.T. in 1965, I worked for a company in a town near M.I.T.. The founder, Arthur Kantrowitz, was a Professor at Cornell, as was Hans Bethe. Hans came each month as a consultant. He reviewed significant work and gave his thoughts and recommendations. I presented work at Committee meetings for him to review. He was pleased with my group's results. I spoke with him again a few years later when he gave a lecture at The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. His lecture was about the creation of the elements above hydrogen in the sun that are observed in the discrete spectral lines in the sun's continuous light spectrum. The nuclear creation process involves a catalytic nuclear cycle from hydrogen up through carbon. That was the work for which he had received the Nobel Prize in Physics years earlier. Needless to say, it was a wonderful presentation.
Afterwards, I went up to talk to him. I told him that I was struck with the similarities between his presentation and the work we were doing, that he had reviewed at AERL. He said “I was often struck by the very same thought.”
Needless to say, I was pleased, actually thrilled, that he had good memories of me.
I have read that even with the accute raw material shortages and rationing that went on during WWII, anything needed for the Manhattan project was was delivered on a silver platter. It was understood that if the United States failed to create a working atomic bomb before the Germans or the Japanese we would likely lose the war. Within the Manhattan project, nothing was given a higher priority than the special modifications that were needed to be made to standard B-29 bombers which would enable them to drop atomic weapons. For that reason these modifications were code named "Silverplate". Pictured here and preserved for history is the Enola Gay which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima Japan, the effects of which probably killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people while helping to end WWII and probably saving 1 million American lives.
Lee Poulis (Baritone) is Robert Oppenheimer in the opera Doctor Atomic (John Williams, 2005). Teatro de la Maestranza, Sevilla.
PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON "YOUR PHOTOSTREAM" ON THE RIGHT.
To view my "Photo By Russell Kwock" Bay Area Sports Time Machine photo gallery, go here:
www.flickr.com/photos/golfbumsf/sets/72157628794754707/
No.
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Who :
(While in Flickr, click directly on the pic to enlarge it. Click on it a second time to bring it back to the small size.)
What : Portrait of Albert Einstein
By Roman Vishniac
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Vishniac
Roman Vishniac (/ˈvɪʃniæk/; Russian: Рома́н Соломо́нович Вишня́к; August 19, 1897 – January 22, 1990) was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. A major archive of his work was housed at the International Center of Photography until 2018, when Vishniac's daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, donated it to The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Albert Einstein in his office, Princeton University, New Jersey, 1942
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
"Hoping to establish himsef as a portrait photographer by creating a series of images of famous Russian and German Jewish expatriates, Vishniac contacted Einstein and asked to take his portrait in 1942. The Nobel Laureate sat for a series of photographs in his Princeton University office, smoking a pipe, writing at his desk, having his portrait painted, and working on equations on the blackboard. The portraits, which Einstein later declared among his favorites, have been widely reproduced and were published as a portfolio in the 1970s".
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Evelyn Einstein, Famed Physicist’s "Granddaughter":
berkeleyplaques.org/e-plaque/evelyn-einstein/
Einstein Family Residence: 1090 Creston Road, Berkeley, California (right down the street from one of my childhood friend's house... the one who pointed it out to me many years ago)
"UC Hydraulics professor Hans Albert Einstein (1904–1973), son of the renowned physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955), and his wife Frieda had three sons before adopting a daughter, Evelyn. Chicago records list Evelyn Einstein’s mother as an unmarried sixteen year old. Evelyn maintained that as a child she had been told she was “Grandpa’s” illegitimate daughter from an affair with a ballet dancer. This she contended was substantiated at her Swiss boarding school when she heard that Frieda had told the headmaster that she and Hans had adopted Evelyn as a favor to Albert. Albert Einstein’s confession that he had had affairs with young women late in life perhaps reinforced her contention that she was his daughter rather than his granddaughter."
Hans Albert Einstein (of UC Berkeley):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Albert_Einstein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Einstein
"Einstein was born in Chicago; after her birth she was adopted by Hans Albert Einstein. She obtained a Master's degree in Medieval literature at University of California, Berkeley. She was married to Grover Krantz for 13 years. She then worked briefly as an animal control officer, as a cult deprogrammer and as a Berkeley, California reserve police officer."
Granddaughter of Albert Einstein Remembered Fondly in Albany:
patch.com/california/albany/granddaughter-of-albert-einst...
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/us/19einstein.html?_r=0
jewishcurrents.org/may-13-einsteins-granddaughter-and-the...
www.berkeleyside.com/2011/05/05/saving-the-history-of-the...
My Friend Evelyn Einstein:
www.guernicamag.com/features/my-friend-evelyn-einstein/
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Albert Einstein's brain:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain
"She heard rumors that she might actually be Einstein’s own daughter. Einstein had relationships with various women and she thought that she could have been a result of one of those relationships and that Einstein had arranged it with Hans Albert to adopt her. Unfortunately, the way Harvey embalmed the brain made it impossible to extract usable DNA, so her curiosities were never satisfied."
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126229305
"One scientist who'd asked for samples was Marian Diamond at the University of California, Berkeley. She wanted pieces from four areas in Einstein's brain...Then in 1990, a Stanford University researcher named Stephen J. Smith published a paper in the journal Science that would change everything..."
Destiny Fulfilled
Fields' book begins with the story of Thomas Harvey stealing Einstein's brain.
Harvey never got a chance to read it. He died in 2007. But there's little doubt he would have been pleased to know that, even in a roundabout way, his actions helped scientists learn something about the nature of genius.
"I think there would be some sense of destiny fulfilled if he knew that," Paterniti says.
As for the stolen brain, Harvey never did give it to Einstein's granddaughter, Paterniti says. She didn't want it.
So Harvey returned the brain to the pathology department at Princeton University, where it remains.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
"He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and, being Jewish, did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the U.S., becoming an American citizen in 1940.[10] On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential development of "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" and recommending that the U.S. begin similar research. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project."
Manhattan Project:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
www.atomicheritage.org/location/university-california-ber...
"Much theoretical research and thought for the Manhattan Project also took place at Berkeley. In the spring of 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer, also based out of the University of California, Berkeley, worked with his former postdoctoral student Robert Serber and two current students Eldred Nelson and Stan Frankel on the problems of neutron diffusion and hydrodynamics."
Voices of the Manhattan Project - UC Berkeley:
manhattanprojectvoices.org/location/university-california...
"The "Rad Lab" was the short name for the Radiological Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Its director was Nobel laureate Ernest O. Lawrence. He gained recognition for his 60" cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator first invented in the early 1930s. Known as “atom smashers,” cyclotrons accelerate atoms through a vaccuum and use electromagnets to induce collisions at speeds up to 25,000 miles per second. The results of such experiments provided valuable clues about the behavior of atoms and was the driving force behind the electromagnetic separation of uranium that formed the basis for the Y-12 complex at Oak Ridge. In addition, Berkeley was the center for theoretical physics in the United States and spawned such notables as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Glenn Seaborg, and Emilio Segrè."
Where : Contemporary Jewish Museum
736 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
When viewed : May 13, 2016
Event : "Roman Vishniac Rediscovered" exhibit
Feb 11–May 29, 2016
www.thecjm.org/on-view/currently/roman-vishniac-rediscove...
"Roman Vishniac (1897–1990), an extraordinarily versatile and innovative photographer, created the most widely recognized photographic record of Jewish life in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars."
Roman Vishniac:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Vishniac
vishniac.icp.org/curators-introduction
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Vanished no more: Giant of photography Roman Vishniac finds a home at The Magnes (UC Berkeley):
news.berkeley.edu/2018/11/20/vanished-no-more-giant-of-ph...
"His entire photographic work is now coming to Berkeley from a 10-year stay at New York’s International Center of Photography. The ICP has launched a rebirth of interest of Vishniac’s work with a touring exhibition currently in London and then headed for Vienna, and in the 2015 book Roman Vishniac Rediscovered.
There are some 20 binders of contact sheets that Vishniac never had printed. They are coming west, along with about 6,500 photographic prints, including about 1,500 scientific prints. In addition, the bonanza includes about 10,000 negatives and 40 albums of slides. One of the first jobs of The Magnes will be to catalogue it all."
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Judah L. Magnes Museum
Berkeley, California
Map:
www.google.co.th/maps/place/The+Magnes+Collection+of+Jewi...
magnes.berkeley.edu/about/faqs
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and...
Mara Vishniac Kohn on the Vishniac collection at The Magnes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx2FjxU7gq8
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Terror in focus: the Jewish photographer who captured the rise of Nazism:
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/oct/28/roman-vishni...
Roman Vishniac, the photographer who captured Jewish life before the Holocaust:
www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/roman-vishnia...
Photographer : Roman Vishniac
Image Source : Russell
Scanned By : Russell
Contributor : Russell
Russ-Pedia Notes :
Nikon 1 J4
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"Photo By Russell Kwock"
*** San Francisco Bay Area Sports Photographer ***
Since 1971...
All photographs and videos are
COPYRIGHT RUSSELL KWOCK
More 35mm black/white sports pics from my photo vault will be added to Flickr...check back...
Oct. 2012 New: "Thailand - Asia Photo Blog"
www.flickr.com/photos/golfbumsf/sets/72157631862809626/
Updated: 2016 0525 x2
J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," stands with Lt. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, Jr., who directed the Manhattan Project.
1925 - 2000
Dr. Chappen indeed was a brilliant man. I was referred to him somewhere in the 70's - late 80's while employed by East Wind Industries in Trenton, NJ. and had stopped and chatted with him for decades. My East Wind employer's son, John Paul D'Antonio, initially suggested I talk with Dr. Chappen as I was having difficulties at home as a result of work/life balance.
I was introduced to East Wind Industries via Kelly Services, and started as a temp and was eventually hired.
Dr. Chappen eventually suspected space-taking lesions in the brain and referred me to have an MRI. That didn't happen as Dr. Chappen had a heart attack and I did not follow through. He was a wonderful man and told me many stories of his time in the battlefield, many if which would make most people's stomachs curdle. He was a member of the Greek Orthodox church but knew some of my family (Pauline Bartko from the Russian Orthodox church) well. He said he was also taking care of his Mom. He walked like a penguin. Possibly from sitting too long in the same place day in day out.
My employer's son, John Paul D'antonio, affectionately referred to Dr. Chappen as "Crazy Eddie". It was during this course of employment where I encountered I.J. Profaci and wound up working in Dover, Delaware for a short time for Quality Control in the plant where they made chemical protective clothing for the US Government. Delaware was a great place to work. I had a great job, great employer, in a great environment making good money with many percs. This was a fairy-tale job. I also learned about the Chesapeake Bay and eating crabs on newspapers outside on picnic tables. It was a long commute although Mario D'Antonio (my boss) offered me a company vehicle - Lincoln Town Car to drive from Lawrenceville, NJ to Dover, Delaware. I did not like that car and refused the offer. He then offered to drive me to Delaware each day. I refused, as Mr. D'Antonio was quite chatty, ate too much and I would get headaches while attempting to focus on the road.
I was told by John that their book keeper, Dorthy, cooked their books. I did see evidence of that but was hesitant to tell anyone, as Dorothy immediately made false accusations against me. We worked it out. To this day no one knows what happened to all of that money. Maybe their kids do. Mr. D'Antonio frequently gave loans to companies in Mexico - I'm not sure IJ knew about these loans. I believe that's referred to as "loan sharks". He also gave a loan to construction companies - one that comes to mind is Jonel Construction in Johnstown, PA., owned by John Gelormino. My job was to secure those monies. Mr. Gerlomino also owned a radio station - WJNL - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJHT They poured a lot of concrete.
As I understand it, Mr. D'Antonio later became an informant for the FBI and all of his information was forgiven and forgotten. He said he also worked on the "Manhattan Project" which probably fried his brain some.
Ms. Christine Chadwick, an associate, helped in confirming much of this information. I do not know where Christine is now as she prefers not to be tagged.
Lastly, I learned about parental separation and stress. It happens.
Your song for the day is The Manhattans - Kiss and Say Goodbye : www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtjro7_R3-4
The town of Los Alamos, New Mexico did not exist until 1943 when it was decided that this location would be the centre for research, design and final assembly of the first atomic bombs - to be dropped on Japan.
It existed in secret. It wasn't on any map, no mail was delivered there (mail went to Santa Fe instead) and famous scientists were given false names. Security fences, patrolled by the military deterred anyone curious.
After the war work on atomic bombs continued. To this day there is large secure area (now separated from the town) where work on a variety of things nuclear and otherwise continues.
No unauthorised outsider was allowed to enter the town until 1957. Today the town is open to visitors, with an atomic museum and historic buildings available to visit.
This is an original building from the secret period. It is known as Fuller Lodge and is now an arts centre.
The failnt green layer near the top contains Uranium containing ore which was mined during world War II to provide part of the material needed for development of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project
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Wildflowers on the bluffs above the Columbia River on a windy day in Hanford Reach National Monument, Columbia River Basin, Washington State, USA
Subject: Wu, C. S (Chien-shiung) 1912-1997
Columbia University
Type: Black-and-white photographs
Date: 1963
3/20/1963
Topic: Physics
Local number: SIA Acc. 90-105 [SIA2010-1507]
Summary: In 1963, Chien-shiung Wu (1912-1997), professor of physics at Columbia University, was already considered one of the world's foremost experimental physicists. Her experiments, with the aid of associates Y.K. Lee and L.W. Mo, confirmed the theory of sub-atomic behavior known as "weak interaction
Cite as: Acc. 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archivess
Persistent URL:Link to data base record
Repository:Smithsonian Institution Archives
The National Park Service manages some sites where there's almost nothing to look at. How do you do that in the "secret city" of Los Alamos, New Mexico?
This observation point was located near the main entrance to the closed town during and after WW2.
The town of Los Alamos, New Mexico did not exist until 1943 when it was decided that this location would be the centre for research, design and final assembly of the first atomic bombs - to be dropped on Japan.
The entire town existed in secret. It wasn't on any map, no mail was delivered there (mail went to Santa Fe instead) and famous scientists were given false names. Security fences, patrolled by the military deterred anyone curious.
After the war work on atomic bombs continued. To this day there is large secure area (now separated from the town) where work on a variety of things nuclear and otherwise continues.
No unauthorised outsider was allowed to enter the town until 1957. Today the town is open to visitors, with an atomic museum and historic buildings available to visit.
2020, there are plans to greatly ramp up production of nuclear "pits" - the core of nuclear bombs.
This album contains found images of S-Site badge pins, collected in an attempt to catalog their known styles and numbers. Browse the album for more images
The town that (officially) did not exist. As the centre of design and final assembly of the first atomic bombs the town of Los Alamos was completely isolated from the rest of New Mexico.
Even it's mail went to a Post office box in Santa Fe.
Today anyone can enter the town and see the historic sights but the modern laboratories are clustered on the other side of a canyon and you certainly can't go there.
The town of Los Alamos, New Mexico did not exist until 1943 when it was decided that this location would be the centre for research, design and final assembly of the first atomic bombs - to be dropped on Japan.
It existed in secret. It wasn't on any map, no mail was delivered there (mail went to Santa Fe instead) and famous scientists were given false names. Security fences, patrolled by the military deterred anyone curious.
After the war work on atomic bombs continued. To this day there is large secure area (now separated from the town) where work on a variety of things nuclear and otherwise continues.
No unauthorised outsider was allowed to enter the town until 1957. Today the town is open to visitors, with an atomic museum and historic buildings available to visit.
Parts of the town were contaminated with nuclear materials - most sinisterly Plutonium but others too. Close to where this building stands was the location where most of the work on Plutonium took place. Unfortunately significant amounts of that deadly element escaped from the old building during the war and years later a big decontamination operation of the ground was necessary. I wonder how many people who work here are aware of the history of this location?
Even today there are still concerns about nuclear contamination that still exists in areas outside the town - but not very far away.
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from the nuclear reaction of fission or from a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a ton can produce an explosion comparable to the detonation of more than a billion kilograms of conventional high explosive. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, had a yield of approximately 50 megatons of TNT and even small nuclear devices with yields equivalent to only a few thousand tons of TNT can devastate a city. Because of their extreme destructive power, nuclear devices are weapons of mass destruction.
[Pinhole photograph] Larger? ••• 2010 Artifacts Calendar
Here is one of the latest in the Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series. This was taken about three weeks ago on my most recent New Mexico trip. I first photographed the keys on my previous trip to New Mexico last May, but I was not satisfied with the images I made of them. So they traveled with me again when my work schedule took me back to the Southwest this Fall. In the intervening months I had also acquired many more more keys, including six large ones in France this summer.
This scene was photographed on a windy ridge in the mountains overlooking Los Alamos. I hiked through the charred, skeletal remains of a burned out forest that was incinerated in a catastrophic wildfire nine years ago, and up a steep, rocky slope to reach this arch. All around was a scorched landscape. Even though the fire was in 2000, it looked much more recent than that.
Los Alamos, of course, was one of the primary sites for the Manhattan Project, the secret World War II program that resulted in the development of the atomic bomb. The main think tank for the project was located here in the weapons research and design laboratory, and it was here on the mesa below this natural arch that the first atomic bombs were assembled.
There are several things I like about this image. Here are three of them, two visual and one conceptual:
The jagged shape of the rocky ridge resembles the business end of the skeleton keys scattered on the rock.
I also like that the fact that the natural arch creates a keyhole shape in the rocks.
And finally, on a conceptual level, I am intrigued that this image of keys and a rocky keyhole was photographed in the place where over sixty years ago the keys were discovered that unlocked the secret Pandora's Box of the atomic bomb.
The first two things were clear to me as I was on the windy ridge making this photograph. The last has only occurred to me as I have worked on the image yesterday and today.
I really value that aspect of photography. That some photographs have layers and that you can often discover new meanings if you peel away enough of those layers, look closely at the image, or regard it from a different perspective.