The note itself is pretty hard to decode it is in Conant’s nearly-impossible handwriting. Don’t read too much into the fact that the pages look different one is just scanned in black and white, the other as grayscale.) 2 (The handwriting is Conant’s though, which is something. I say “apparently” because, while this follows the other sequentially in the file, it isn’t clear that they are attached or from the same period. The context of the sketch is apparently a note from Conant to Bush, dated Janu(with notes that it was amended March 10, 1943). During World War II, Conant was pals and colleagues with Vannevar Bush, head of the OSRD, and the two of them did quite a lot of work on early atomic development policy. 1 The chemical munitions that Conant worked on were never used in the war the armistice came just before they were to be shipped out. He was a chemist by training, and was no stranger to secret projects: during World War I, he had worked to develop lewisite for use in Europe while working at the “Mousetrap” facility in Cleveland, so called because once you went in, you were never supposed to come out. But is it?Ĭonant, of course, was a major scientific administrator during the war. That looks an awful lot like the drawing of a gun-type nuclear weapon. Conant, then the President of Harvard University: So I was somewhat surprised to find, buried in some files of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, this drawing which appears to have been made by none other than James B. (Where “official” means “created by people who actually build bombs.”) It’s the sort of thing which is generally kept close - what are released are generally extremely sanitized abstractions, which are then elaborated upon by people without security clearances (like John Coster-Mullen). ![]() ![]() ![]() I had fun with the little visual mystery I posted last Friday, so here’s another one I’ve been chewing over for awhile.ĭrawings of “official” atomic bomb designs are rare.
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