Why They Called It the Manhattan Project (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Why They Called It the Manhattan Project (2007)

nytimes.com

70 pointswglb20 comments

I'm loving all the history of the atomic bomb and related articles, but I'm curious. Is this just a trend on HN right now or is something I'm not aware of going on?

There is a dramatic series made just for WGN-TV called Manhattan. Its about life in Los Alamos during the bomb development times. Its about spies, counter-spies, bored horny housewives and bomb development. it was more interesting in the beginning, but has bogged down in subplots.

Is Feynman cracking safes in it?

The recent non-fiction best seller "Radiance" covers Manhattan and its before and after. I didnt realize how many of these people I crossed paths with at one time.

The Twilight Zone is on Amazon Prime Instant Video at the moment.. They sure were worried about the H-bomb in 1959.

" But General Groves feared that would draw undo attention."

Geez, the NYFT used to have copy editors. Dismayed to see that this goes back to 2007. I wonder if they were using voice recognition.

The Manhattan Engineering District HQ was, for some time, on the 67th floor of the Empire State Building. Or so says "Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project", Cynthia C. Kelly, ed. But that's a 2006 book, and the remark lacks a footnote. An earlier source is needed.

My grandparents worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the war. A couple interesting reads:

City Behind a Fence: http://www.amazon.com/City-Behind-Fence-Tennessee-1942-1946/...

Girls of the Atomic City: http://www.amazon.com/The-Girls-Atomic-City-Untold/dp/145161...

Oh the reaction that would happen now should any perceived as dangerous if not truly dangerous project were to be hidden around a major metro area or within. Considering the uproar slowly evolving over Ebola, the CDC, and hospitals who treated people, it doesn't take much this day and age to generate interest or work on people's fears.

I think the reaction would have been muted by the fact that the project was long gone by the time the details were widely known. And the danger of radiation was also not widely appreciated until the 50s.

I used to work a few years ago in/around some of the Columbia buildings used by the project, where the football-players-trucking-uranium-through-the-tunnels story was well-known. The story ended with: those players all died young, mostly from cancer. Maybe that part of the story is harder to confirm; it was left out of the OP.

I actually work for a tech startup in the Chambers Street building that was the original HQ of the Manhattan Project. It kind of blew our minds when we found out!

This article doesn't even mention Fermi! Anyway, I thought most people already knew the Manhattan Project began in Manhattan.

> This article doesn't even mention Fermi!

Or Leó Szilárd, who had the original idea for nuclear fission, supposedly while crossing a street:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd

Quote: "The stoplight changed to green. Szilárd stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come."

A somewhat hyperbolic description, but still.

Hyperbolic? Well, it is right at the beginning of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and it's Rhodes' hook used to introduce the bigger story.

But even so, he's not wrong. Szilard did have (or claimed to have) a sudden epiphay, which according to Rhodes was significantly informed by H. G. Wells' "The World Set Free", which does foretell nuclear war and "a way to the future, death into the world" etc.

Been re-reading Rhodes' book the last few weeks and it's spectacular, not to mention some great turns of phrase. I really wish someone would make a multi-part tv documentary based off his book. Just fascinating stuff.

Indeed. The new WGN show "Manhattan" [1] was extremely disappointing in that regard. It's highly fictionalized, and having read TMAB and other books and articles about the project, I found most of its depictions of Los Alamos unrecognizable.

Among the scientists, only Oppenheimer is included (and the actor is horribly miscast); no mention of Fermi or Feynman or Teller or any of the others. If you're doing a series on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos, how can you not have Feynman skulking around cracking safes open and disobeying curfew (not to mention the tragedy of his wife's situation), or Teller keeping everyone awake by playing Bach loudly on his vintage Steinway far into the night?

The movie "Fat Man and Little Boy" is interesting, as it's a straight attempt at telling the Los Alamos story, but dramatically it falls pretty flat, and both lead roles are extremely miscast. (The most interesting part of it is a fictionalized version of the Slotin/Daghlian incidents where John Cusack gets radiated.)

The canniest casting of Oppenheimer so far was the 1980 miniseries "Oppenheimer" with Sam Waterston, which is great classic "theater television"; ultimately just a bunch of people talking, in various rooms, with a static camera and many closeups. Waterston looks quite a bit like Oppenheimer, and captures his combination of keen intelligence and boyish enthusiasm.

Edit: Forgot to say, Dark Sun is also interesting. Not as lyrical, but chock full of fascinating history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_(TV_series)

[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078037/

> Hyperbolic? Well, it is right at the beginning of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and it's Rhodes' hook used to introduce the bigger story.

Then I retract my comment (too late to edit it) -- Rhodes' book is first-rate, one of the best on its topic. I've enjoyed Rhodes' writing on this topic immensely, and I can't recommend it too highly. I didn't realize the comment came from that book (I found it in an online Szilárd biography).

This is one of my all-time favorite books, along with its sequel.

It's incredible. I don't think I have read a non-fiction book that is as novelistic.

With TMAB he had the luxury of being allowed to paint a huge, sweeping story. I felt that Dark Sun suffered a little from not having the same width of canvas; it has to deal with a lot of different events and concerns, from the Rosenbergs to Oppenheimer's trial. But it's still a great book.

Speaking of which, I found Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" to be horribly written in comparison. The writing is uneven and sloppy, and the way he jumps between two different stories (the Damascus incident and then the story of nuclear weapons) doesn't work at all. If I'm reading a (if not from a literary point of view, then at least factually) fascinating depiction of a nuclear incident, I don't want it to stop every few pages because the author wants to backtrack and tell me about the history of nuclear weapons. It's unfortunate, because the history the book tries to depict is fascinating.

Anyway, I wonder if Rhodes' other writings are as good?

As an aside, I know someone who runs a cocktail bar called the Manhattans Project - http://manhattansproject.com/

He's also a developer and physics geek, so a lot of the drinks end up with fantastic nuclear program puns.

The FatManhattan etc.

If you're in London, UK, you should definitely join his mailing list and go along to an event (they happen every month or so).

As an aside, the Manhattan cocktail was invented for Churchill's mother.

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