Set this up . Let them decide or let you decide. Well let the audience decide. Listen closely now. The decision is which man was the indispensable man of the Manhattan Project . Take it away. I guess ill start. Thats part of the title of my book actually. Ill just speak about two aspects of general groves. As you may or may not know, he grew up in the army. His father was an army chaplain. He was determined to go to west point and he graduated fourth in his class. At the time the automatic choice of anyone who was at the head of their classes at west point joined the corps of engineers. He graduated on november 1st 1918. War was over but 11 days later november 11th 1918, and hes now an engineer in a Peacetime Army and very slow to move through the ranks. And in the run up to world war ii after he served in various places around the United States, been getting bigger and bigger projects and getting good efficiency reports he is part of the Construction Division of the army corps of engi
This was set up originally in 1943 as clinton laboratories. Dn have the name oakridge at the time. And the purpose of clinton laboratories was to learn how to produce plutonium which was a radioactive element that could split and release vast amounts of energy just like some uranium can. But they didnt know much about plutonium. It was an artificial element. It had to be created by man. They knew nothing about the characteristics of plutonium. Building started in february of 1943. This facility, the graphite reactor as we know it today, was starting in spring of 1943, completed by november of 1943. And came on line as the worlds first operating Nuclear Reactor and in this case, used specifically to produce tiny, tiny amounts of plutonium which were recovered and then shipped up to the laboratory which was part of the Manhattan Project in chicago. So they could be characterized up there. And other bits of plutonium that were produced here were shipped tout Los Alamos Laboratory in new m
I think that groves through his obsession with secrecy and not letting any information out really was one of the architects of not only the Manhattan Project architecture of secrecy, but what came afterwards and were still living with today. Were talking about compartmentalization, which was the bedrock way that he organized things. You only needed to know what you needed to know and nothing else. So that kept everyone limited to a certain spot. And i characterized it as a kind of pyramid. It was down at the bottom people hardly knew what they were working on at all. Maybe they were just turning the dial or something at oak ridge, and as you went up the pyramid, fewer and fewer people knew more and more about the different aspects of the program. And at the very top was general groves who knew everything, and it was really basically the source of his power because he was able to orient things in such a fashion to keep it moving. So i could talk about all of that and i could talk about
Set this up . Let them decide or let you decide. Well let the audience decide. Listen closely now. The decision is which man was the indispensable man of the Manhattan Project . Take it away. I guess ill start. Thats part of the title of my book actually. Ill just speak about two aspects of general groves. As you may or may not know, he grew up in the army. His father was an army chaplain. He was determined to go to west point and he graduated fourth in his class. At the time the automatic choice of anyone who was at the head of their classes at west point joined the corps of engineers. He graduated on november 1st 1918. War was over but 11 days later november 11th 1918, and hes now an engineer in a Peacetime Army and very slow to move through the ranks. And in the run up to world war ii after he served in various places around the United States, been getting bigger and bigger projects and getting good efficiency reports he is part of the Construction Division of the army corps of engi
This was set up originally in 1943 as clinton laboratories. Dn have the name oakridge at the time. And the purpose of clinton laboratories was to learn how to produce plutonium which was a radioactive element that could split and release vast amounts of energy just like some uranium can. But they didnt know much about plutonium. It was an artificial element. It had to be created by man. They knew nothing about the characteristics of plutonium. Building started in february of 1943. This facility, the graphite reactor as we know it today, was starting in spring of 1943, completed by november of 1943. And came on line as the worlds first operating Nuclear Reactor and in this case, used specifically to produce tiny, tiny amounts of plutonium which were recovered and then shipped up to the laboratory which was part of the Manhattan Project in chicago. So they could be characterized up there. And other bits of plutonium that were produced here were shipped tout Los Alamos Laboratory in new m