5 Manhattan Project Artifacts from the Dawn of the Atomic Age

5 Manhattan Project Artifacts from the Dawn of the Atomic Age

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  Trinitite

  Trinitite is an artifact created by the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, undertaken by the US Military in Alamogordo, New Mexico on 16 July 1945. The Trinity test was the final test prior to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki three weeks later. Trinitite is the result of the Trinity nuclear bomb having melted the New Mexico desert sand – primarily composed of quartz and feldspar – into glass.

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  Richard Feynman’s Letters to His Wife, Arline

  One of the most famous participants in the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman moved to New Mexico with his first wife, Arline, in March 1943. However, while Richard lived at Los Alamos with the other scientists, Arline was confined to a sanatorium in Albuquerque, where she was slowly dying from tuberculosis. Richard and Arline’s correspondence would sustain Richard in his war work, and although Arline would die on 16 June 1945, it was one of her favorite questions that became his enduring mantra: “What do you care what other people think?”

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  Archive of Letters from Prominent Postwar Scientists

  Although J. Robert Oppenheimer is – for good reason – the person most associated with the Manhattan Project, many other brilliant scientists helped create the atomic bomb. Signed letters from seven of the project’s participants – James Bryant Conant, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, Emilio Segre, Harold Urey, George Kistiakowsky and Glenn Seaborg – can be found in this archive of letters, written in response to invitations to speak at the colloquium of Atomics International.

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  Draft of Press Release on Trinity Bomb Test

  The Trinity test took place on the morning of 16 July 1945, inaugurating the nuclear age and changing the world forever. Richard Feynman claimed to have been the only person to have seen the Trinity test unobstructed, as he had eschewed the use of protective glasses. This draft press release, based off of a letter Feynman wrote to his mother on 9 August 1945, describes the Trinity test and the preparation leading up to it in magnificent detail, and also talks about the creation of Trinitite, the glassy green rocks created from the melting of the desert sand by the bomb blast.

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  Mel Feynman's Copy of the Famed “Smyth Report”

  Officially titled Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, Henry DeWolf Smyth’s report on the Manhattan Project (of which Smyth himself was a participant) was released on 12 August 1945, just days after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Smyth Report served to inform the American people about the Manhattan Project and helped its participants know what information had been deemed acceptable for public consumption. Here we have Richard Feynman’s father’s copy, signed by Richard Feynman alongside his mention in the report.

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