The Birth of the Manhattan Project

The Birth of the Manhattan Project - WW2 Special

Рет қаралды 122,566

2 жыл бұрын

When nuclear fission was discovered, scientists theorized if it could be used in an atom bomb. Thus, American Army sets up one of the biggest research projects in history: The Manhattan Project.
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Between 2 Wars: • Between 2 Wars
Source list: bit.ly/WW2sources
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Miki Cackowski, Daniel Weiss & Eastory ( / eastory )
Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss
Norman Stewart - oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Mikołaj Uchman
Sources:
Picture of Fritz Strassmann, credit: Hanne Zapp-Berghauser, courtesy Irmgard Strassmann
Core fission by Stefan-Xp commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
from the Noun Project: Plunger TNT by Creaticca Creative Agency
Chicago Pile-1 team, © Copyright Triad National Security, LLC. All Rights Reserved
Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes - London
Johannes Bornlof - The Inspector 4
Fabien Tell - Other Sides of Glory
Reynard Seidel - Deflection
Phoenix Tail - At the Front
Bonnie Grace - Imperious
Johannes Bornlof - Death And Glory 3
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

Пікірлер: 792

@WorldWarTwo 2 жыл бұрын

Imagine a world where this super-weapon that the Americans working at the manhattan Project are attempting to create, exists. Imagine that not just the Americans have them, but that their biggest enemy have them too -and that they're attempting to build launching sites just off the coast of the USA. Stop imagining, because this will happen. You can watch all about it in our day-by-day coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis: kzfaq.info/sun/PLrG5J-K5AYAWbzTXiTzPEFQHLoozkqchz

@stoopidphersun7436 2 жыл бұрын

This "A-bomb" project will surely be a waste! Even if they do it, by that time the axis will have certainly have won!

@julianshepherd2038 2 жыл бұрын

Don't mention the British project (Alloy Tubes)that pre dated the Manhattan and had its work subsumed into it.

@fabriziomangione3231 2 жыл бұрын

10:30 "Enrico come on! The pasta is getting cold, shut that damn thing off already!" And so Chicago was saved.

@isilder 2 жыл бұрын

@@julianshepherd2038 yes. Its like Davinci as the inventor of the helicopter. szilard draws a picture Einstein agrees with it and notifies Roosevelt. But its alloy tubes who does the investigations and measurements to really lock in the details of bomb made of U235 or of the plutonium isotope....

@MartinCHorowitz 2 жыл бұрын

Some missing info Leo Szilard was thing about the Atomic bomb in one HG Wells books, and realized that the math for chain reaction might actually work, that is when he decided to contact Einstien. While Most of the Inventions in HG Well's books haven't come true, the book things to come, provided a scary preview of the WWII battlefield.

@frankendragon5442 2 жыл бұрын

My uncle was in the Navy during WWII. While he never spoke about it, he was assigned to "special materials handling" at the University of Chicago.

@666Blaine 2 жыл бұрын

The US Navy was actually shut out of the Manhattan Project. They were, however, running their own program to design a small reactor for submarines. (The US Army went out of their way to specify that the US Navy should have nothing to do with the bomb )

@marshalleubanks2454 2 жыл бұрын

Fermi hired the U. of Chicago football team and other UC jocks to carry and stack the graphite bricks, as they were heavy. Everyone working on building the pile would go home at the end of the day looking like coal miners, and they weren't allowed to tell their spouses why they were getting so dirty.

@crazygame2724 2 жыл бұрын

My Dad work for Dupont in 1942 through January 1945. He worked for the Manhatten District at Hanford Washington

@c1ph3rpunk 2 жыл бұрын

@@marshalleubanks2454 there are parts of that side of the campus, near the old squash court, that are still closed off due to radiation danger. Years back I trudged over there, using the old steam tunnels, with one of the network folks and we came across a heavy door marked “NO ENTRY” and had the radioactive symbol on it. Was told by the engineer that was the access door to the pile where they lugged all the materials in. There are also a series of steam tunnels that connect UC down Lake Shore drive, supposedly all the way to Soldier Field, where they stored the raw materials and waste. I never made it that far, the one I took ended around 57th Dr under the museum.

@muhchung 2 жыл бұрын

@@marshalleubanks2454 President Hutchinson had already abolished football team and fraternities then.

@bangscutter 2 жыл бұрын

Those were the days when you could literally build a doomsday device in an university basement in the middle of a large city, without occupational health and safety breathing down your neck.

@exeggcutertimur6091 2 жыл бұрын

A real life Dr. Evil 'welcome to my underground lair' moment for sure. Minus the cartoonish incompetence of course.

@sirmeowthelibrarycat 2 жыл бұрын

🤔 Indeed - who needs those interfering busybodies trying to save workers from dangerous forms of employment . . . ? Just a passing thought . . . !

@TheEvertw 2 жыл бұрын

Some scientists did die due to radiation poisoning in the course of the Manhattan Project...

@johnhasley8008 2 жыл бұрын

After they got the controlled reaction started (and presumably stopped) they went next door (or close enough) and discussed the implications of what they had done. No guards on the door or any other security. There were only a few dozen people in the world who could understand what they were discussing.

@mjbull5156 2 жыл бұрын

China looks away and whistles nonchalantly.

@danielnavarro537 2 жыл бұрын

“I have become death, destroyers of worlds.”- Robert Oppenhiemer.

@jjeherrera 2 жыл бұрын

So melodramatic, wasn't he?

@TheEvilmooseofdoom 2 жыл бұрын

Do you use double quotes when quoting someone who was quoting someone?

@lovablesnowman 2 жыл бұрын

@@jjeherrera bit of a whiner all things considered

@Conn30Mtenor 2 жыл бұрын

"I know that you are, but what am I?" - Pee Wee Herman.

@Sman7290 2 жыл бұрын

"It's an ancient Hindu text, quoted by an American.

@j.m.f5451 2 жыл бұрын

Good job building tension with that story-telling, even though I was already pretty certain that nobody blew up Chicago in the 1940's.

@Duke_of_Lorraine 2 жыл бұрын

"Fermi is convinced the reaction can be stopped, before it runs out of control" Comrade Dyatlov : press X to doubt

@GeorgeSemel 2 жыл бұрын

You beat me to the cheap shot at the Russians !!!! My thoughts exactly! Graphite Pile and some rods, what could go wrong?

@davidwright7193 2 жыл бұрын

Fermi’s pile didn’t have an AZ5 button but it did have a man with an axe to cut a rope holding control rods out of the core.

@noahsmith7732 2 жыл бұрын

Accidentally pressed AZ5 and blows up

@Duke_of_Lorraine 2 жыл бұрын

@@davidwright7193 simple, but reliable

@isilder 2 жыл бұрын

@@Duke_of_Lorraine and if the man burns,the rooe6 burns too. Failsafe !

@merrygin 2 жыл бұрын

To be fair, this topic would 100% deserve a whole miniseries by you guys. It ties in so much that happened before, during and after WW2 (up until today, certainly) and the story is positively riveting (and terrifying). I can recommend Richard Rhodes' "The making of the atom bomb" to anyone interested in this topic.

@Bareego 2 жыл бұрын

Wrote a similar comment. It's one of my favorite books. IIrc there was a tv series made by Canadian television but I recall it was very boring to me back then (compared to the book)

@merrygin 2 жыл бұрын

@@Bareego Yes, right?! Mine too. I didn't manage to read his other books yet, unfortunately. I imagine its hard to make a tv series out of it!

@martingautreau5583 2 жыл бұрын

definetly deservers a mini series

$@fractalmadness9253$

@fractalmadness9253 8 ай бұрын

The movie already came out.

@folumb 2 жыл бұрын

Pearl Harbor is December 1941 and the Manhattan Project launches 9 months after this. I'm astonished by the speed and foresight they had about how important this was

@markmierzejewski9534 2 жыл бұрын

It still boggles the mind that the development of the B-29 bomber cost more Then the Manhattan project

@t5ruxlee210 2 жыл бұрын

Crash programs are never cheap. The B-29 also had to be built in massive numbers to safeguard the atom bomb secret and possibly compensate for a failed atomic program. If a program involving a few dozen aircraft had been started as a top priority with huge spending any expert would have realized something did not add up. Even then, the postwar B-50 program was started to correct many B-29 "no time to fix, get it out the door", issues.

@ivoivanov7407 2 жыл бұрын

"Tens of millions dollars" is understatement... by a lot. Final cost is near $2B

@lynnwood7205 2 жыл бұрын

The two projects together cost more than one years Gross Domestic Product, this cost undertaken while fighting for the very survival of the Republic in what is becoming an ever expanding war across the world!!!

@CarrotConsumer 2 жыл бұрын

@@lynnwood7205 America wasn't fighting for survival.

@lynnwood7205 2 жыл бұрын

@@CarrotConsumer At the time they thought so.

@Ashfielder 2 жыл бұрын

“By 1942, several actors have nuclear weapons programs.” Jimmy Stewart and Fred Astaire will soon rule the world!

@johnrettig1880 2 жыл бұрын

@@timmyp34 OH HELL NO

@vksasdgaming9472 2 жыл бұрын

Jimmy Stewart was cunning enough to join US Air Force to get military support for his planned coup as evil dictator with mad scientist making nukes to him.

@andrewwmacfadyen6958 2 жыл бұрын

Nuclear Kerplunk !🤔

@eedwardgrey2 2 жыл бұрын

@@johnrettig1880 "Ladies and gentlemen we start bombing in five minutes"

@ludvigmartinelle4780 2 жыл бұрын

Good video, small note: The Chicago pile wouldn’t have blown up, just melted and become extremely radioactive.

@shaider1982 2 жыл бұрын

Yup, (spoiler alert)you'd have to compress the fissile material using a conventional explosion to create a nuke explosion.

@markmierzejewski9534 2 жыл бұрын

@@shaider1982 That was for " Fat Man " .. " Little boy " went with The "gun" assembly method. When the hollow uranium projectile was driven onto the target cylinder, a nuclear explosion resulted.

@ab-lymphocite5464 2 жыл бұрын

@@markmierzejewski9534 it was still highly compressed the gun was giving a little more than a love tap

@georgf9279 2 жыл бұрын

It wouldn't have blown up in the same way Chernobyl didn't blow up. Still not the kind of situation you would want in the middle of Chicago. Edit: Yes the pile was smaller then Chernobyl. Just in case someone starts to nitpick.

@isilder 2 жыл бұрын

But there may have been a way for all that to happen.. the graphite can burn, letting the fuel drop and condense... At Fukushima, there was an explosion where water and some metal generated hydrogen and then the hydrogen gas mixed into air and exploded. I know,fermi didnt use such reactive metals, but naybe if the carbon was burning... Un a rush they might have done something ill-considered, with unforeseen consequences...

@akshittripathi5403 2 жыл бұрын

"WW2 gave a massive impulse to scientific military advances- " Well, if that isn't an understatement!

@Rickinsf 2 жыл бұрын

"If you want to gauge the advance of a civilization, look at their weapons...we put our all into killing each other," said my history prof a million years ago.

@mikepette4422 2 жыл бұрын

All wars do ww1 advanced ships and aircraft massively in 4 years

@welshskies 2 жыл бұрын

Yep, killed a lot of people too, most of them innocent civilians.

@philip8498 2 жыл бұрын

hopefully we are finally at a point where we dont need to slaughter each other in the millions just to speed up scientific advancement. that would be a great achievement.

@CzarOfMars 2 жыл бұрын

Minor technical correction for those interested: at 8:30 indy mentions that graphite "moderates nuclear reactors". There's aconfusion here: graphite is indeed a moderator, but that makes the nuclear reaction *more* intense. What it moderates is the speed of the neutrons flying through the reactor: when neutrons are emitted by uranium splitting apart, they move too quickly and "miss" the other uranium atoms, thus preventing a chain reaction (obvs this is a simplification, the exact reason is wonky quantum mechanics I don't understand). By bumping into the graphite, neutrons slow down and therefore have a greater chance of triggering further fission events. The cadmium control rods mentioned later in the video are what is used to slow the reaction down, by absorbing neutrons and therefore removing them from play.

@gianniverschueren870 2 жыл бұрын

This tie is psychedelic. 4/5

@Steeyuv 2 жыл бұрын

And I have never seen Indy fiddle with it before!

@saschat.6607 2 жыл бұрын

I dare to say, it even radiates. I'll see myself out.

@mirycreek 2 жыл бұрын

Brings new meaning to bold paisley

@stevecsghost372 2 жыл бұрын

Most fans: Comes for neat military history. Me and this guy: "Indy's tie shall be judged yet again."

@quietkiwi7572 2 жыл бұрын

I look forward to more reviews in the future.

@Ass_of_Amalek 2 жыл бұрын

funny how there was a time when you could write the US president a letter about nuclear physics and he would understand and take appropriate action! :O

@CrasusC 2 жыл бұрын

Only if the author of the letter is a famous scientist.

@axelpatrickb.pingol3228 2 жыл бұрын

Because the one endorsing it is Albert Einstein. Also, the ones penning the letters are giants in the scientific community in their own right...

@ashelyrudd2194 2 жыл бұрын

They “, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as (displaced persons) as long as They get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog,” - Truman wrote on July 21, 1947 in his journal.

@OnionChoppingNinja 2 жыл бұрын

I don't think you need to be a genius for this. They basically told FDR "you can make a big ass bomb with this Uranium stuff"

@AHappyCub 2 жыл бұрын

@@OnionChoppingNinja "Hey, we can made a bomb out of this"

@theemissary1313 2 жыл бұрын

"They didn't know how far along German scientists were" That's why Operation Telemark was undertaken, because why take the chance?

@Duke_of_Lorraine 2 жыл бұрын

indeed. The V2 with a conventional warhead was an expensive joke, but putting a nuclear bomb on it would have been a nightmare.

@kenobi90000 2 жыл бұрын

@@Duke_of_Lorraine Yup, even a "near miss" on a city would still wipe out a good section of it, though as I understand it, the V2's inaccuracy still would've been too inaccurate to be usable as any kind of tactical battlefield weapon, even with a nuke.

@Duke_of_Lorraine 2 жыл бұрын

@@kenobi90000 electronics were too limited to make it tactical indeed, and Germany was not the leader in that anyway. But given its main redeeming quality that was ignoring the enemy air superiority, it could strike while it would have been a pointless suicide for a bomber.

@sirmeowthelibrarycat 2 жыл бұрын

@@Duke_of_Lorraine 🤔 You describe the V2 as an ‘expensive joke’? Tell that to those who lost their lives when a V2 struck Antwerp or London. None of them laughed at the ‘joke’ weapon which was capable of destroying entire streets of terraced houses in one explosion. Unlike the earlier V1 that could be shot down the V2 was impossible to challenge once launched. Travelling at supersonic speed there was no warning of its arrival until after the explosion. Truly a terror weapon even without a nuclear warhead.

@Duke_of_Lorraine 2 жыл бұрын

@@sirmeowthelibrarycat when you consider the price to build this rocket, yes, it's nearly pointless. Regular bombers could do much more damage, and with more accuracy. Explosive balloons also caused some civilian deaths, this doesn't mean it was a good weapon.

@pelleas2681 2 жыл бұрын

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer

@kevinramsey417 2 жыл бұрын

It haunted him for the rest of his life.

@ashelyrudd2194 2 жыл бұрын

First We Take Manhattan by Leonard Cohen, Look up what that song is about on wiki it's a supremacist song about Leonard Cohen's ethnic/religious group taking over other people's societies. "But our terrorists, Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein. The whole world is still quaking." "Our terrorists", who is "Our"? Who is the "We" in the title? It's Leonard's religious/ethnic group, " Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein" etc "First WE take Manhattan, then WE take Berlin"

@Ass_of_Amalek 2 жыл бұрын

Ashely Rudd what the duck 😳

@ashelyrudd2194 2 жыл бұрын

@@Ass_of_Amalek yup

@SlideRulePirate 2 жыл бұрын

"My buddies and I got to home instead of bleeding out or getting blown to bits in the surf." - A whole bunch of Marines [probably]

@hscollier 2 жыл бұрын

The same technical information about the science of the atomic bomb that put me to sleep in high school has become very interesting through the TimeGhost way of presenting it. You bring history to life and make it relevant! Thank you!

@dtaylor10chuckufarle 2 жыл бұрын

Very well said.

@MrWazzup96 2 жыл бұрын

This special actually made me sit on the edge of my seat. Amazing how Indy can make physics so exciting!

@AtheistPirate 2 жыл бұрын

The Manhattan Project quite literally built the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco) and gave it a distinct regional identity that persists to this day. The Hanford Nuclear Site--a short drive away from my childhood home (around 20 minutes or so)--has been a huge regional employer even after its decommissioning (the ongoing cleanup is its own can of worms). My late grandfather worked at the Fast Flux Test Facility as a chemical engineer, and you can hardly take a step without meeting someone who either works at Hanford (or PNNL) or knows someone who does. All that said, thank you for covering this fascinating bit of history. I look forward to more of the same.

@nmm5214 2 жыл бұрын

On a sidenote Albert Einstein said "I do not know with what kind of weapons WWIII would be led but the fourth WW would be led with sticks and stones"

@jjeherrera 2 жыл бұрын

Einstein gave too little credit to human ingenuity. There might also be bows and arrows.

@philip8498 2 жыл бұрын

which is really interesting to me. if our technology and resources are so limited that all we can use for warfare are sticks and stones, how will we have a society interconnected enough to have a real world war where nations all over the earth are participating. lets be honest, if pen and paper is the pinnacle of communication then how will we even be able to declare a war on a nation a couple thousand kilometers away. and if wooden sailingships are all we got then how will we ever be able to fight someone who isnt on the same continent as us?

@podemosurss8316 2 жыл бұрын

A book that covers the Manhattan proyect from the viewpoint of one of the lead figures (later Nobel prize Richart P. Feynmann, at the time Richard P. Feynmann PhD) and which I recommend is the book "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynmann", which are his memoirs. He has a few chapters dedicated to the Manhattan proyect and the anecdotes he lived there, including how he accidentally invented programing while his team was thinking on how to use a bunch of mechanical computing machines they had received from IBM (basically they were machines that came on different classes, and could perform one and only one mathematical calculation, for instance they had a machine that made sums, another that made multiplications and another that reordenated data), on how he pranked the censors whenever writing letters back to his first wife (before her death during the war). He gives a lot of insight on how things are done from the viewpoint of a physics researcher.

@jjeherrera 2 жыл бұрын

Feynman's tale was funny and interesting, but I recommend "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Phillip Rhodes. That's a must for anyone interested in the development of the weapon. Then he wrote other books on the hydrogen bomb and what came next.

@buckhorncortez 2 жыл бұрын

@@jjeherrera The author's name is RICHARD Rhodes.

@GuyofRome 2 жыл бұрын

The Axis powers gave the Allies the tools of their own destruction, in the form of their ex-scientists.

@mikepette4422 2 жыл бұрын

True they did and good thing. They had a lot of their own still in Germany, however, but those either never told the Nazis about the possibilities or if they did the Nazis just didn't grasp the importance and urgency which is a good thing. But when the best of them fled they lost a lot of the brainpower and those guys really understood it would take the US to and its endless resources do this right.

@davidhimmelsbach557 2 жыл бұрын

@@mikepette4422 Speer reported that the resources required totally amazed the Nazis -- as in he had no idea of where Nazi Germany could conjure up enough industrial support for a Nazi Bomb. Think about it, the Bomb took about 20% of the US war product. The B-29 took about 20%, Antibiotics took about 20%, the remaining 40% of the American out-put destroyed Germany and Japan. IT would've taken ~ 75% of Nazi Germany's war production to replicate the Manhattan Project. For starters, the Oak Ridge plant consumed about 20% of the US electrical grid -- all by itself. Germany simply could not dedicate such resources without shutting down its military engine.

@michaeldowson6988 2 жыл бұрын

The Manhattan Project also included researchers, uranium and heavy water from Canada, UK & France. Canada's first reactor attained critical mass a month after Japan surrendered, and declared the technology would not be used for weaponry a few month later.

@Psychonaut316 2 жыл бұрын

A great deal of the uranium used leading up to this was mined in Canada, and refined in Port Hope, Ontario.

@freetolook3727 2 жыл бұрын

When they were developing the atomic bomb, one of the concerns was what if the chain reaction doesn't stop and ignites the atmosphere.

@CK-nh7sv 2 жыл бұрын

They also calculated that even atomic bombs don't even remotely have the power to do so.

@Ass_of_Amalek 2 жыл бұрын

that would have been one way to end the war...

@f-35enjoyer59 2 жыл бұрын

@@Ass_of_Amalek Can’t have a world war if you don’t have a world.

@buckhorncortez 2 жыл бұрын

Edward Teller brought up the idea, in 1942, that a nuclear bomb might cause enough heat to initiate a runaway fusion reaction in the atmosphere. It took Hans Bethe a couple of hours of calculations to prove that wouldn't happen. Teller then got Emil Konopinski to calculate whether it would be possible to cause fusion with the hydrogen in the atmosphere. Again, the answer was no, it was not possible.

@ivoivanov7407 2 жыл бұрын

Well, at the end Teller got it working... on a smaller scale.

@williamevans5782 2 жыл бұрын

Good script, delicate subject, with a lot of "hear-say" in the historical record. Good job!

@buckhorncortez 2 жыл бұрын

Not if you read the correct books and then make up your own mind from what you've read.

@sarahgreiner2694 2 жыл бұрын

My Granddad (dad's side) worked on testing the uranium for this project.

@portalman4665 2 жыл бұрын

Way back when this series started, I posted a few annoying comments haranguing the channel to talk about Szilard and the Manhattan project. I quickly realized how annoying I was being and stopped, but the part of me that wished to see the early Manhattan Project featured is very happy right now. As always, fantastic work and a huge thank you for all the wonderful information you share.

@exeggcutertimur6091 2 жыл бұрын

Fun fact: people are 100x more likely to forget you exist than think you are annoying. Never stop asking questions. You will remember the answer long after others have forgotten the question.

@matdrat 2 жыл бұрын

(Oh what might have been) ...and so Fermi and his team blew up Chicago and humanity enters the nuclear age. They say his last words were, "Hey, it worked."

@jjeherrera 2 жыл бұрын

It wouldn't have blown up Chicago, but the neutron spike would have killed everyone present eventually, since they had no shielding, and the graphite would have caught fire, spreading radioactivity. It wouldn't have been nice anyway.

@billythedog-309 2 жыл бұрын

At the start of the war Britain was the most advanced nation in the development of nuclear power and, on the basis of an understanding between Churchill and Roosevelt that any bomb that was developed would be shared between the UK and the USA, all the British based nuclear scientists moved to North America to take part in the Manhattan Project. When Roosevelt died President Truman refused to honour this and atomic secrets were kept for the USA leaving Britain to have to develop it's own bomb.

@nickdanger3802 2 жыл бұрын

Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s plan for World War Three media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/operation-unthinkable-churchills-plan-world-war-three/

@DraigBlackCat 2 жыл бұрын

Aye, the Tube Alloys project was 'hidden' amongst the Top Secret Chemical Weapons factory site at Rhydymwyn (near Mold) in N Wales.

@nickdanger3802 2 жыл бұрын

@@strongbrew9116 FDR authorized research in October 1939. Tube Alloys was authorized by Churchill so after 10 May 1940. What did Britain "give" to the USA in 1940 that it did not already have?

@nickdanger3802 2 жыл бұрын

@@strongbrew9116 So they had theory's. When was it determined Britain did not have the resources to build the bomb?

@billythedog-309 2 жыл бұрын

@@nickdanger3802 Yes, now l think about it, you're right and the fact that the President authorised research is much the same as saying the work was done. The USA did everything and the UK provided nothing, therefore any agreement to share atomic secrets was automatically null and void.

@Wustenfuchs109 2 жыл бұрын

A physicist here. A few notes - it was not Otto Han's crew that figured out nuclear fission (even though they got a reward for it later), it was actually the French, team around Irene Joliot-Curie. They published their work and Otto Han wrote to her to retract the work or "he will be forced to disprove it and embarrass the French". Irene did not retract and in the process of trying to disprove the French, he actually could do nothing but confirm it. Also, you missed a large influence that information from Niels Bohr played in American program. He stayed in Denmark throughout the war and was visited by Heisenberg (Niels Bohr was almost a daddy figure to all scientist in the field during those times, but that's a different topic) where he discovered what the Germans were working on and how far have they come. It was instrumental in the establishment of Manhattan Project. They've met on September 15th 1941 (lasted until 21st) and Bohr relayed the information to the Allies, and on October 9th 1941, Roosevelt approved the creation of a nuclear program. During the meeting, Heisenberg handed Bohr the drawing of a reactor they were building in Germany, and that is what actually lit the flame under the American asses once the news were received. It is a strange thing not to mention when talking about the birth of Manhattan Project.

@buckhorncortez 2 жыл бұрын

That's all open to interpretation as Bohr thought the drawing given to him showed a bomb. When he showed the drawing to Szilard, he interpreted it as a reactor. The drawing and Heisenberg's attitude at the meeting with Bohr broke up their friendship as Bohr and Heisenberg's description of the meeting were totally different descriptions of the same meeting with Bohr insisting Heisenberg was changing the story to simply make himself look better after the War. Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Jolier-Curie, Strassman, and Otto Robert Frisch? Everybody's story is different and it comes down to who published the data first. But, there is no doubt that if Hahn and Strassman got Nobel prizes, Lise Meitner should have too since she's the one that accurately interpreted the results of Hahn and Strassman.

@Wustenfuchs109 2 жыл бұрын

@@buckhorncortez Nothing you wrote here contradicts what I've said. Yes, Bohr was not sure what was on the drawing (news flash - bomb and the reactor are almost the same on a sketch, the only difference on a crude level like that is that the reactor has a moderator), but it did not matter, it was proof that Germans were deep in the project while USA did not even start it yet. Which was the point - after the Bohr reported the meeting, USA expressly initiated the project. Who gives a damn about individual recollections of the meeting - it plays no role what so ever in what I've said. And about the discovery of fission, you are dead wrong. Because again, it is not about individual's recollection or who got a prize, but about who did what first. French got the data first, Germans were just repeating it in order to disprove it - but ended proving it. There is a clear chronology of events and actual written correspondence between the parties before the war. That's how we know who did what and when.

@xmaniac99 2 жыл бұрын

One can only wonder how history would have looked like if the Italian science council would not have denied Fermi's requested cyclotron funding (there are a lot of what-if moments here).

@r.ladaria135 2 жыл бұрын

I actually had a nightmare about that.

@BigBoss-sm9xj 2 жыл бұрын

@@r.ladaria135 wow it must have been a very interesting nightmare

@r.ladaria135 2 жыл бұрын

@@BigBoss-sm9xj Just like a press release, just scaring. I guess I need profesional help. :-)

@mgway4661 2 жыл бұрын

@@BigBoss-sm9xj so much olive oil and balsamic vinegar

@marshalleubanks2454 2 жыл бұрын

Probably no change, as Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon.

@steveschulte8696 2 жыл бұрын

Point of clarification, Uranium is not split 50-50, more like 60-40. The fission reaction can produce any thing from Hydrogen to Thorium, just maximally at 40-60. A small number of neutrons in a critical pile come from daughter products of the initial chain reaction, and they appear some time later. For the reaction to go boom, you need to get more neutrons, which have a habit of leaking or joining with the Uranium without a fission. Criticality is defined where you just get enough neutrons to the next step as you had in the first place.

@scumballer6656 2 жыл бұрын

This was a spectacular special. Please, do another special on the progress of the Manhattan project! The story is fascinating and your team tells the story so well.

@gunman47 2 жыл бұрын

Ah, the Manhattan Project. I'm sure a certain Gandhi will be interested in this project for his trigger happy Civilization games once he obtains the uranium..... When that happens: "OUR WORDS ARE BACKED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"

@ashelyrudd2194 2 жыл бұрын

"“Xxxxxxx are as a rule uncivilised - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals." - Gandhi

@gunman47 2 жыл бұрын

@@Rahulrao2576 It is a reference to the Nuclear Gandhi meme from the Civilization video game series, where due to a bug in the first Civilization game, the normally pacifist and peaceful Gandhi suddenly becomes extremely aggressive and use nuclear weapons heavily. Since then, this Nuclear Gandhi meme has carried on into Civilization V and VI as well. Wiki for you if you want to know more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

@vonskyme9133 2 жыл бұрын

@@Rahulrao2576 it is a joke based on a game, nothing more. No insult to India (edit: or Ghandi, for that matter) is intended or in any way implied, although if one is not already familiar with the history of the joke it may appear that way.

@axelpatrickb.pingol3228 2 жыл бұрын

@@Rahulrao2576 It's called " Today I Learn". Rather than reject new facts, acknowledge it...

@HellsCowBoy666 2 жыл бұрын

@@Rahulrao2576 I’m pretty sure they are talking about the game Civilization. It had a bug where Gandhi had a low aggression level but if you lower it like you normally would with other world leader characters he becomes MEGA aggressive. At least I hope they are.

@ReLmScrewup 2 жыл бұрын

The best book I've read, was 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes. It goes fairly in-depth from the beginning of nuclear physics, up to the nuclear tests on the Bikini Atoll. I highly recommend it for anyone that is interested in the topic. The audio book format is also great (recorded for cassette, though you can find it digitally). In that way I have listened to it three times over the last couple of years, mostly while driving. Every time I revisit it, I learn something new. The whole journey Nuclear Arms development takes is a rollercoaster from start to finish. So many of the most important discoveries they make are complete accidents, and especially Fermi's work in Italy, very haphazard, with a mentality of 'if it works, its good enough'. The espionage at play through the whole war is also very exciting. One of the best parts about the whole affair is the interpersonal rivalries between the greatest minds the world has known, and their own reasoning for working on such a project.

@jjeherrera 2 жыл бұрын

Nice account as a 10 min. summary! It's also worth to mention that along with the British team came Hans Füchs, a communist German, who sent the full secrets of the Manhattan project to the Soviets. Definitely a good subject for your "Ties and Spies" episodes. Something else you omitted is that the letter was delivered to Roosevelt by Alexander Sachs, who had direct access to the president. Still, it took more than two years until the issue was taken seriously by Roosevelt. The British and Canadians had already achieved significant advancement, but lacked the resources and necessary environment to bring the project for fruition, so it was only natural for them to join the Manhattan project as an allied enterprise; something that was forgotten after the war.

@buckhorncortez 2 жыл бұрын

KLAUS Fuchs, not "Hans."

@jamescormack4669 2 жыл бұрын

And here opens Pandora's box

@Otokichi786 2 жыл бұрын

Unlike the Maxim gun, this is a weapon that can't be used in wartime, once both sides have The Bomb.

@moleratical1232 2 жыл бұрын

@@Otokichi786 Oh it can be used in war time even if both sides have it. Let's hope it never is though.

@mgway4661 2 жыл бұрын

@@Otokichi786 it’s really only a matter of time

@henrykissinger3151 2 жыл бұрын

11:12 It seems you missed the meeting between the leader of the german nuclear energy project Werner Heisenberg and Danish Nobel Prize winnder Niels Bohr in Bohr home in Copenhagen in September 1941. Where Heisenberg explained that Germant was in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons, perhaps so far as to even give Bohr a sketch of a nuclear reactor, turned nuclear bomb. Its quite important in the context of German-American nuclear arms race, especially since Bohr later fled Denmark in 1943, to contribute a major part to the Manhatten Project.

@mrgunn2726 Жыл бұрын

The speed and size of the infrastructure built to support the Manhattan Project was nothing short of a world wonder. The new sciences and engineering required be developed was mind boggling.

@jayvee1947 2 жыл бұрын

My aunt and uncle met during work on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University.

@SRC2387 2 жыл бұрын

This is one of the best episodes yet done. Thank you guys for the hard work and setting up of the explanation of the process of nuclear science.

@iupetre 2 жыл бұрын

I remember hearing bits and pieces of the lead up to the experiment under chicago, but I haven't seen it laid out so well. Very good work!

@TheJojoaruba52 2 жыл бұрын

Good thing Fermi didn’t have a stroke as the critical mass was being achieved…”Should we shove in the rods now, Enrico? …Enrico…

@F_Tim1961 2 жыл бұрын

FYI Enrico was in the US mainly because his wife Laura was Jewish and there was a serious risk that the family would be persecuted for worse....TEF

@eedwardgrey2 2 жыл бұрын

@@F_Tim1961 Just imagine if that wasn;t the case.........and he would have stayed in Axis territory......

@F_Tim1961 2 жыл бұрын

@@eedwardgrey2 It is a worry as he was very pushy effective type of operator who got things done , without making people hate his guts - like Gen Groves for example. OTOH with science and engineering if you try to motivate people and their hearts aren't in it , you get very little progress and might even get sabotage. I wonder if EF would have done the experiment where he did it had he known just how risky the outcome was (he was probably concerned about the radiation aspect but only slightly) - I doubt of the thoughts of the pile glowing, heating up the graphite, it all catching fire and then the pile burning had occurred to him - bear in mind had that happened in the first few hrs, there would not have been many transuranics generated in the pile and basically burned U oxide and soot would have gone everywhere - a massive security issue but not the sort of health issue (except long term) that you'd imagine. TEF NzL

@F_Tim1961 2 жыл бұрын

@@eedwardgrey2 practically nothing would have happened on the Italian side as they were under resourced and I don't thing the German Nazis would have trusted them sufficiently to integrate them into the German program. The German thrust was in fact to get a reactor that could keep a submarine at see for six months or more at a time. Much easier said than done. If the Germans had say twenty such subs , competently crewed i could have turned the tide of the war as many submarines were spotted outward to the Atlantic (Bay of Biscay) and returning - and were knocked out. Subs that basically did not have to come and go , apart from crew and food and water issues would have made a massive difference to the German side.

@belbrighton6479 Жыл бұрын

For people who get BBC sounds their podcast ‘the bomb’ is excellent and covers the espionage, links to Weimar Germany and the moral debates of the participants. Well worth a listen.

@WorldWarTwo Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the recommendation

@poetasintierra 2 жыл бұрын

Excellent episode! Congrats! I have watched it twice... so far

@ethangorham17 2 жыл бұрын

Small Tidbit to add: the first usage of the term "atomic bomb", came in 1913, in HG Wells' book 'The World Set Free'. In it, Humanity had mastered energy to such a degree that the weapons of war used could destroy the species and radiate the Earth. The book was later cited by numerous notable scientists researching nuclear fission as having been a direct inspiration to their work in the 30s/40s, including Leó Szilárd, who read the book in 1932, the same year the neutron was discovered, and from there would conceive of the idea neutron chain reaction. Future Spoiler Alert, after the atomic detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Wells, still alive, was reported to have been asked if he could write a new foreword to 'The World Set Free', in which he committed 4 words: "I told you so."

@brianhum8765 2 жыл бұрын

Love the video!! The whole race to nuclear power during the war involving commandos, fjords in Scandinavia, construction projects on a scale rarely ever seen, etc. is a great study.

@SuperArkleo 2 жыл бұрын

Perfect presentation

@QuizmasterLaw 2 жыл бұрын

I'm just a pipefitter, looking for tube alloys

@georgewilliams8448 2 жыл бұрын

Very well done, another excellent video. I enjoy all the videos but the "extra " ones are a great treat!

@richdobbs6595 2 жыл бұрын

At the University of Minnesota in 1979 we had a chemical engineering unit operations lab session where we irradiate samples using a reactor that was of the same design as the Chicago pile, but a fraction of the size possible to achieve criticality. My undergraduate advisor, Herbert Isbin, shocked me one day when he just handed me a fuel can of the same kind as used in the pile. AFAIK, this was un-enriched natural uranium, so pretty tame stuff.

@krato890 2 жыл бұрын

I've been looking forward to this

@snowinthepark1620 2 жыл бұрын

The best explanation of this subject.

@BigBoss-sm9xj 2 жыл бұрын

Awesome episode! Loved every second of it!

@matthewmcneany 2 жыл бұрын

Enrico Fermi blowing up Chicago with a nuclear bomb in the middle of WW2 feels like an interesting alt history avenue of exploration.

@sampoole6540 2 жыл бұрын

It was Ernest Walton, who was Irish, and John Cockcroft, English who split the atom on the 14 April 1932 in the Cavendish Laboratory of Trinity College Cambridge which was led by Rutherford. Walton attended the school I went to in Dublin and despite having his daughter Marian as my science teacher I didn’t reach quite the same heights in academic achievements. I read somewhere that he was invited to join the Manhattan Project but turned it down. Cockcroft was involved in various projects during WW2 including developing radar. They shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951.

@brokenbridge6316 2 жыл бұрын

Nicely done video.

@viliussmproductions 2 жыл бұрын

Great episode. I hope to see more on the Mannhattan project.

@naveenraj2008eee 2 жыл бұрын

Hi Indy Another interesting episode.. Learned about fermi's experiment.. Thanks..🙏👍😊

@Jackie3771 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for all of your hard work! I really enjoy your videos! Very good quality!

@hidekitojo2277 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you I find it amazing that there are people with the intelligence to put this all together and make it work

@JustSomeCanuck 2 жыл бұрын

If memory serves, as a backup there were 3 men standing on top (!!!!!) of Chicago Pile 1, ready to flood it with liquid cadmium in case the control rods failed to stop the chain reaction. Candidate for worst job in history?

@Philip271828 2 жыл бұрын

The Safety Control Rod AxeMen

@buckhorncortez 2 жыл бұрын

@@Philip271828 Yes - SCRAM.

@thexalon 2 жыл бұрын

Given that a couple of scientists died and several others got radiation poisoning "tickling the dragon's tail" in 1945 and 1946, there were perhaps more dangerous jobs.

@kirbyculp3449 2 жыл бұрын

Thomas Edison's x-ray headshot test subject. IIRC, he died of cancer. Yow. There is also a russian guy that was zapped in a super-collider.

@isilder 2 жыл бұрын

@@thexalon .. its the same job , they were tickling this baby dragon. Frische irradiated himself slightly with his own teenager dragon ( lady Godiva apparatus ) ... when his own body acted as a neutron mirror just enough to change 0.99999999999999999 ( equilibrium easily reached at not much power increase) to 1.00000000000000000 ... Critical..equilibrum power is on the dragon scale.

@Rickinsf 2 жыл бұрын

My middle-school science teacher worked in Chicago on the 'Manhattan Project,' and said Fermi was something akin to a rock star among the crew...when he showed up on site, she said, "everyone passed the word, 'Fermi's here!'"

@thekurgan1580 2 жыл бұрын

Another awesome video 🤘

@miketedder1079 2 жыл бұрын

Always good content. Always.

@talatsonsurong3238 2 жыл бұрын

This is the best episode yet.

@gurufabbes1 2 жыл бұрын

Fantastic explanations here. The WW2 outdoes itself again.

@RobertGrif 2 жыл бұрын

Funny how hearing Indy describe the design of Chicago Pile 1 reminds me so much about the design of the RBMK reactor...

@Rihnoswirl 2 жыл бұрын

Any chance that we’ll get an episode about Werner Heisenberg and the German atomic program one day?

@jjeherrera 2 жыл бұрын

There was already one in the "Ties and Spies" section.

@tyler1107 2 жыл бұрын

It’s… uncertain :)

@danielafreedman 2 жыл бұрын

From what I have been able to gather Heisenberg was working on an atomic reactor to power submarines, and they had a bad accident with it. The bomb program was headed by Kurt Deibner and Hans Kammler. Deibner was the head scientist and Kammler was the SS commandant in charge of slave labor for project Reise or giant to create an atomic weapon. They successfully tested it on Oct. 11th 1944 on Roegen Island in the Baltic. Yes, they beat us by six months!

@edalder2000 2 жыл бұрын

My father is 85. He is an engineer and metallurgist. My father worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs for 30 years constructing domes for nuclear reactors. Father is still working and has an engineering consulting firm He has over 60 years experience. It's beyond my comprehension that The Manhattan Project made my father's career possible.

@dtaylor10chuckufarle 2 жыл бұрын

Beautiful explained, mates!

@Dave_Sisson 2 жыл бұрын

No mention of *Tube Alloys* the code name for the British program which was merged into the Manhattan Project?

@Ass_of_Amalek 2 жыл бұрын

love that name

@julianshepherd2038 2 жыл бұрын

🇺🇸 was England in WW2 !?

@Southsideindy 2 жыл бұрын

I've talked about the Tube Alloys program a few times in the regular weekly episodes, and Britain's progress, and how it was way way behind by 1942. I'll also cover the Quebec Agreement and the cooperation and also lack of cooperation between British and American Scientists, but that's really not until 1943; this is just the beginning of the project to the nuclear pile. But Tube Alloys was not really merged into the Manhattan Project, though, it was subsumed by it- again, after the Quebec Agreement.

@Israel_aXNyYWVs 2 жыл бұрын

@@Southsideindy TIL that your name is Indiana

@davidwright7193 2 жыл бұрын

He did mention the Maud report with its critical estimate of the neutron absorption cross-section. Prior to that the estimate was 3 or 4 orders of magnitude different (lower?) giving a critical mass of 1-10 tonnes of enriched uranium required. That wasn’t practical in the 40’s as the bomb would be too heavy to deliver by air and more importantly there was no way to get that much fissile material. However the kg or so suggested by the new estimate was doable with effort. Even with the development of centrifuge cascades the US couldn’t have built a bomb before about 53 or 54 on the original estimate. This was the main reason the Germans stopped work on the bomb they didn’t think they could enrich the required amount of uranium.

@shaider1982 2 жыл бұрын

Nothing like going from a video on how quantum mechanics is the prime mover in entropy in the SpaceTime channel and them going into the wonderful world of the manhattan project here👍

@BasedBonobo 2 жыл бұрын

Keep up the good work :)

@thethirdjegs 2 жыл бұрын

Chicago experiment is like whaaaaat. I'll panic if i knew there is an experiment on atomic weopons underneath my city.

@Ycjedi 2 жыл бұрын

Could have been worse, like St. Louis got. Look up Coldwater Creek and West Lake Landfill

@shawnr771 2 жыл бұрын

You realize that many large universities where physics is studied have their own reactors?

@thethirdjegs 2 жыл бұрын

I mean back in 1940's

@shawnr771 2 жыл бұрын

@@thethirdjegs You mean you would not panic if there were atomic tests in your city today? There is so much dangerous research going on all around us it is crazy.

@thethirdjegs 2 жыл бұрын

@@shawnr771 well this annoying. With how Indell described the procedure, it seemed chicago's fate rested upon the cadmium rods being placed inside the graphite box before the chain reaction becomes uncontrollable. So my stupid comment is merely saying that what Fermi and his team did was scary!

@bryanguzik 2 жыл бұрын

"Fermi convinced he can stop, etc". Sounds alot more questionable/nerve-wracking than it is. Pretty straightforward & he was just fine in his certainty.

@NigelDeForrest-Pearce-cv6ek Ай бұрын

Brilliant!!!

@hipcat13 2 жыл бұрын

In Lemont, Illinois, not too far from Argonne National Labs, there is a forest preserve called Red Gate Woods. This was the site of the nuclear reactor used to produce material for the first nuclear bombs (I'm guessing Plutonium). The reactor has been taken down and a sign marks the spot. However, you can still see an occasional Graphite brick along the path to the reactor site.

@_vallee_5190 2 жыл бұрын

It's the chain reaction that causes a nuclear explosion, you need a fissile state and you need a self sustaining nuclear reaction to get an explosion, as in you no longer need to bombard any more atoms with neutrons and the reaction will explode, you need yellowcake for this. Splitting an individual atom will not cause a nuclear reaction in fact an immense amount of Uranium atoms are currently decaying into lighter atoms currently.

@Ass_of_Amalek 2 жыл бұрын

you need yellow cake in special CIA napkins don't drop that s***

@alphamikeomega5728 2 жыл бұрын

Uranium(-235) in pure enough form for a chain reaction does not occur naturally. As well as this, you need a moderator to slow the neutrons so they have the right amount of energy. (This is why Fermi used graphite.) These reasons are why chain reactions don't occur naturally in uranium deposits.

@davidwright7193 2 жыл бұрын

@@alphamikeomega5728 There have been self-sustaining naturally occurring nuclear reactions within Uranium deposits in the past. This doesn’t happen today because too much of the U235 has decayed so you no longer get the critical density in natural deposits even if moderators are present. For reactor fuel you only need a doubling of natural U235 levels. Enrichment to 4 or 5% is sufficient. Yellow cake is part of the chemical refining of uranium from its ores. If the reaction in the Fermi pile had been allowed to continue it wouldn’t have exploded, the uranium was too distributed for that, it would have become molten and eventually caused major Chernobyl like problems because there was no heat sink. To build a bomb is a much tougher problem as you need to keep the critical mass together long enough for the chain reaction to occur and don’t have the moderator present in the same amounts hence you need more fuel, much higher enrichment, neutron reflectors etc.

@davidwright7193 2 жыл бұрын

@mgway4661 2 жыл бұрын

Please join us in the parlor where we will be serving white cake

@Bubbles47 2 жыл бұрын

Did you guys change the camera? Or something during the rendering of the video? This video looks very much better than previous ones, well done anyway

@terryh1451 2 жыл бұрын

We needed your patented “end of episode pause” to be a bit longer. Loved the episode.

@shawnr771 2 жыл бұрын

Vaneevar Bush was also later influential in 1945 when he wrote a speech called "As We May Think". In this speech he speaks about the level of scientific cooperation achieved during the war years and theoretically describes an information sharing system based. This system would use links to relevant information in other people's work. In 1962 Tim Berners Lee would use parts of this speech as inspiration to develop the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the language that makes links on the internet function.

@cogman62 2 жыл бұрын

It was an essay in The Atlantic in July 1945: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

@shawnr771 2 жыл бұрын

@@cogman62 yes. I just knew about it.

@denvan3143 2 жыл бұрын

The control rods for Chicago Pile #1 were raised and lowered by a rope. A man stood by with an ax to cut the rope if the rods needed to be lowered quickly. He was the Safety Control Rod Ax Man - SCRAM. In the case of a possible runaway reaction they would yell “Scram!“ and the ax would fall.

@TheEvilmooseofdoom 2 жыл бұрын

That's one of the claimed origins of Scram.

@robertoler3795 2 жыл бұрын

superb

@tando6266 2 жыл бұрын

For a truly interesting but overlooked science competition was between the Americans, British, ad German aerodynamics. It was the American teams ability to accurately predict high altitude flow attributes that allowed for the development of the mustangs wings giving it the edge over German aircraft and in its small way helping win the war.

@dabda8510 2 жыл бұрын

I read some where the atomic project consumed 1/7 of all electricity generated in USA. That's 14%. And this was during a war time, where all factories were running at 100% capacity.

@frederickbays405 2 жыл бұрын

this was done b/c of FDR's building of power generation as part of New Deal Ppl think the New Deal was about getting ppl back to work but just what work did they do 2 out of every 3 ppl in the CCC where working on war related projects Like Adolf frank was preparing his ppl for war just as Uncle Jo and the Emperor was. The UK was doing Same. The only actor in WW2 who was not doing this right was Bonito You must remember everyone saw WW2 coming just as they did WW! it is just that each kick off sooner then everyone thought they would

@angusmacdonald7187 2 жыл бұрын

My grandfather (due to very long generations) was born in 1876. He fought in the 2nd Boer War and WWI with the Royal Canadian Engineers. When WWII rolled around, he fumed over the fact that they wouldn't let him serve yet again. But they comforted him by making him an Air Raid Warden around Fontana and Redlands, CA. Professionally, he was a civil engineer. He was given a contract to construct a foundation for a building. The money was much better than usual, but the job was out of state and had all sorts of peculiar requirements. He and his crew got to work, but he was confused. "You're having me build a foundation that would hold up a building a good dozen stories, but you're not putting in any allowances for water, gas, or electricity. And there's no town here, only desert. You only have one road, and that's not a very good one, and there are no water mains or electric lines heading towards the place. What the heck sort of building are you guys putting up here?" He got no answer. He was just told to shut up, don't talk to anyone about it, and take the money. It was only a few years before he died that he found out that his "foundation", with all its heavy reinforcement and lack of water or electricity conduits, was at a test facility for a nuclear bomb test. It was not for "the" test, but rather for a subsequent test, a back up in case of need.

@WorldWarTwo 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for taking the time to share your grandfather's story, Angus! We truly appreciate it.

@ardt1912 2 жыл бұрын

Sick tie

@MBP1918 2 жыл бұрын

Interesting video

@vickicaldwell2091 2 жыл бұрын

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Chicago, Il. Look up the Argonne Laboratories in Chicago.

@OmniGuy 2 жыл бұрын

I had a grandpa who worked at Los Alamos in the early days. Nobody, not even grandma could know what he did there. I would love to know what he knew. This is fascinating stuff. When America still had a can do attitude. And not everything was milked for profit.

@Bareego 2 жыл бұрын

If you'd like to get into a lot more of detail on this, I can much recommend "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes. Also covers the discoveries of the subatomic world leading up to this.

@yotsubafanfan 2 жыл бұрын

My great Uncle and great grandfather on my Moms side both worked at Oak Ridge during WWII. When my Nana visited her Uncle he had to physically meet her at the gate so she didn't accidentally walk into a restricted area. She was only an 8 year old little girl but that was how secretive the city was. As for my great grandfather he ended up receiving a certificate from the President for his contributions. We don't know what he did (supposedly he helped in the designing and engineering part) but so few received it that not even the historian at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Museum knew of it.

@WorldWarTwo 2 жыл бұрын

@yotsubafanfan That is quite the family history, thank you for sharing. Do you still have his certificate for the work he did there?

@GeorgeSemel 2 жыл бұрын

I had a Chemistry Teacher in College that worked on the project. He was teaching chemistry but his doctorate was in physics. What is interesting is the real amount of the industrial output of the United States. They could do this monumental undertaking and still have the resources to produce in vast amounts the other more mundane implements of War and the vast amounts of food so the allied powers could keep going. You still have to eat.

@paulklee5790 2 жыл бұрын

Very good point... as the saying goes... America has two great generals, General Motors and General Electric.

@shotsfired_dk 2 жыл бұрын

good episode: 3,6

@Corialtavi 2 жыл бұрын

I remember buying a book by Ernest Rutherford in a charity shop. I think it was dated 1902 or 3 maybe 07. It's a long time ago when I had it. It was the easiest book to read on nuclear power. I suppose because at this time they didn't know what they were looking at and had not made up technical names for processes. It was just we did this and this happened. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of nuclear fusion I could follow it. No idea where that book went, would love to read it again.

@l8tbraker 2 жыл бұрын

“The bomb may have ended the war but radar won it. ' This was the comment of many radar workers in August 1945, when the news of the atomic bomb upstaged the release of public knowledge of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, planned as a cover story for Time.” - ― Louis Brown, A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives

@johnwatson3948 2 жыл бұрын

I like the story in Rhodes book - when Szilard and the other scientists asked the army for that first 6000 dollars and the officer scoffed at their idea of a super-weapon - said a prize had been offered to anyone who could invent a ray-gun to kill a goat they had out back, and the goat is still there. Also - how the Japanese army did not understand their own atomic program - asking the physicists why they wanted to make uranium into an explosive when they could just use regular explosives instead.