Al Cimino - The Manhattan Project: The Making of the Atomic Bomb

In 1913, H. G. Wells wrote a book called The World Set Free in which he envisaged an atomic bomb. He got many of the details wrong. However, his bombs were made from lumps of pure Carolinum, a fictional radioactive element transuranic elements such as the plutonium used in the first atomic explosion in 1945 had yet to be discovered. And Wells says A man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city.

His bombs made a mighty thunder in the air, and fell like Lucifer. They produced tremendous pillars of fire... Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds. They destroyed buildings like a scythe cutting down grass, while mountainous clouds billowed up into the air.

The book was published in 1914, just as World War I was starting. In 1932, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, a Wells fan, read the book. The following year, he realized that you could indeed make an atomic bomb. He went on to patent the invention and, fearful that Nazi Germany might build such a device, alerted the British and American authorities to its possibilities.

The English author, futurist and socialist H. G. Wells (18661946), who envisaged the invention and use of atomic bombs in one of his novels.

He then went to work with other migr physicists to make a nuclear weapon and was a mainstay, if a troublesome one, of the Manhattan Project, the American-led programme to build a bomb. So Szilard could claim to be the father of the atomic bomb. Or was it Wells? In the first memorandum passed to President Roosevelt, outlining the possibility of making a bomb, Szilards first citation is to The World Set Free.

In the book, Wellss atomic bombs were used in a war that pits an alliance of Britain, France and, perhaps, America against Germany and Austria. The war takes place in 1956. As a result, all the major cities of the world are destroyed. A conference is then called in Switzerland where the Britains King Egbert abdicates in favour of a world state. Limitless atomic energy then solves the worlds problems, leaving the majority of the worlds population to pursue a career as artists.

Wells died in August 1946, a year after the atomic bomb had been used for the first time and ten months after the United Nations had been established, so he may have felt justified in his optimism. Many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project did not.

However, what they had done has no equal in history. In a few short years, they had taken an arcane piece of theoretical physics and, with a massive investment of money, materiel and manpower, had turned it into a weapon of immense power, the like of which had never been seen. Along the way they had created entirely new technologies and, in secret, a vast industry that sprawled across America. Despite this titanic effort, until the test of the first bomb on 16 July 1945, many of them did not believe that it was going to go off.

Almost as amazing, for me at least, is that the place where Leo Szilard had his eureka moment and realized that it was possible to make an atomic bomb is just around the corner from my flat in Bloomsbury where I am writing this.

Al Cimino, London, February 2015

On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein, the worlds most famous scientist the Nobel laureate who had stood the world of physics on its head with his theories of relativity sent a letter to the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It said:

Sir:

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations.

In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America that it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable though much less certain that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove too heavy for transportation by air.

The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is in the Belgian Congo.

In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust the task with a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an unofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following:

a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States.

b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of university laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining co-operation of industrial laboratories which have necessary equipment.

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsacker, is attached to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.

Yours very truly,

Albert Einstein

The first page of Albert Einsteins original letter of 2 August 1939 to President Roosevelt about the use of uranium to produce a nuclear bomb and potential sources of the ore.

The letter was to be delivered by Alexander Sachs, a Wall Street economist and unofficial advisor to the president, along with a memorandum prepared by Hungarian migr physicist Leo Szilard, the man who had first conceived of the possibility of making an atomic bomb six years earlier and the author of the letter Einstein had signed.

Although he was a longtime friend, even Sachs had trouble getting in to see Roosevelt, who was busy dealing with the situation in Europe. On 23 August, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact. European armies began to mobilize and on 1 September Hitler invaded Poland, precipitating World War II.