[war] Atomic John … New Yorker article on one man’s obssesive search to find the secrets behind the first Atomic Bombs … [via qwghlm]

‘Human beings are proud of what they create-no matter how controversial or deadly. Edward Teller revealed the essential secrets of the hydrogen bomb in a popular encyclopedia article. In 1995, Robert Henderson, the chief engineer for the Manhattan Project, sent back to Coster-Mullen an early version of the “Atom Bombs” manuscript, with comments such as “shit” and “pure shit,” and then went on to explain the exact (and still classified) process by which engineers made the lens molds that cast the explosives that squeezed the core of Fat Man until it achieved critical mass. Reading through President Truman’s diaries, at the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, Coster-Mullen found an entry dated July 25, 1945, in which the President marvelled that “13 pounds of the explosive” had made the shot tower at Alamogordo, New Mexico, disappear-a pretty accurate estimate of the amount of nuclear material contained in Fat Man.’

Nuclear Archeology

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 10:52 am and is filed under History, War.

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