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The Manhattan Project
the world's scientific community discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets of splitting a uranium atom. Fears soon spread over the possibility of Nazi scientists utilizing that energy to produce a bomb capable of unspeakable destruction. -
albert
With the help of Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein writes President Franklin D. Roosevelt, alerting the President to the importance of research on nuclear chain reactions and the possibility that research might lead to developing powerful bombs. -
nothing to chance
Leaving nothing to chance, Los Alamos atomic scientists conducted a pre-test test in May 1945 to check the monitoring instruments. A 100-ton bomb was exploded some 800 yards from the Trinity site where Gadget would be detonated a few weeks later. -
trinity
On July 16, 1945, at Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, scientists of the Manhattan Project readied themselves to watch the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb. The device was affixed to a 100-foot tower and discharged just before dawn. No one was properly prepared for the result. -
start of the bomb
By May 1945, the Japanese were clearly losing the war in the Pacific; they started making requests for a peace. In fact, the Japanese offered to surrender on 3 August, but their offer was rejected because it wasn’t an ‘unconditional’ surrender. -
dropping the bomb
Instead, on 6 August 1945, the B29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb (nicknamed ‘Little Boy’) on Hiroshima. -
atomic energy act
President Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 transferring Manhattan Project assets and responsibilities to the civilian Atomic Energy Commission. -
klaus
Klaus Fuchs confesses that he gave atomic secrets to the Soviets while working at the Manhattan Project. -
reactor
First British nuclear reactor goes critical. -
ICBMs
Though the U.S. was quicker than the U.S.S.R. to develop nuclear weapons, the U.S.S.R. had turned the tables in developing Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), the delivery system that could carry nuclear weapons across oceans. The U.S. could not afford to delay nuclear weapons deployment to allay the psychological shock of Sputnik that U.S.F.K. and the Koreans were experiencing. -
treaties
The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted until the signing of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty of November 1990. An entire generation grew up under the shadow of imminent catastrophe. -
it's still here
Starting in August 1945, we officially began living in the “Atomic Age.” Which is to say, really, that people started saying that they were living the atomic age. We did this for awhile, and at some point transitioned to the “Nuclear Age,” the “Jet Age,” the “Space Age,” and so on.
