[Feynman, Richard P.]

A DRAFT PRESS RELEASE RECOUNTING FEYNMAN'S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE TRINITY BOMB TEST

This draft AP press release, based on Richard Feynman's own eyewitness account of the Trinity bomb test (See Lot 26, History of Science & Technology, Sotheby's, December 2022), recounts Feynman's experience of the first man-made nuclear explosion on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert—the culmination of the Manhattan Project and the vision of its director, J. Robert Oppenheimer.

There are numerous notations and corrections IN FEYNMAN'S HAND to each page of the draft, adding sentences that had been cut off to pages 2 and 3, as well as correcting numerous typographical errors. In addition, Feynman describes the creation of Trinitite, the glassy green rock created on the desert floor by the Trinity plutonium bomb explosion (see lot 3).

A remarkable document recounting the first explosion of a nuclear bomb, in the words of—and with the autograph notations of—Richard Feynman, the scientist who claimed to be the only person to have seen the Trinity test unobstructed, having eschewed the use of protective glasses.