July - August  2000 Newsletter

Volume I - Issue 4

This newsletter is sponsored by the Society for the Historical Preservation of the Manhattan Project (http://www.manhattanprojectmemorial.org and the Children of the Manhattan Project (http://home.att.net/~cotmp)

Topics covered in this issue:

Topics covered in this issue: 

1)                  Site Statistics for July 2000

2)                  Introducing “Topica”

3)                  Newsletters By Mail

4)                  “Recommend It”

5)                  Quote of the Month

6)                  Featured Book

7)                  Profiles in Secrecy

8)                  “Copenhagen” – The Play

9)                  Du Pont and the Manhattan Project

10)              What’s Ahead

1)    Site Statistics for July 2000

During the month of Julyl, we received 316 visitors with many from countries such as France, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the UK. 

A majority of our visitors were referred to us by the web sites of Paul Tibbets, New Mexico State University, J. Tankard’s Unofficial Trinity Site, and Atom-O-Vision.  We continue to work on exchanging links and more should be added in the near future.

We have continued to move up in some of the major search engines, especially with Snap.com.  We also rank near the top with both Google.com and Search.com.

2)    Introducing “Topica”

We have enlisted the services of Topica.com to manage and distribute this newsletter.  Topica.com was recently selected as the primary newsletter list manager for the new Internet Service Provider created by the merger of Mindspring and Earthlink.

Topica provides easy access to our newsletter subscriptions directly from our web site, thus reducing some of my administrative efforts.

3)    Newsletters by Mail

 In the midst of the electronic age, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that many people still do not have access to the Internet.  As a result, we are now offering our newsletter via mail, at least until the expense becomes prohibitive.  If you know of someone who would like to receive our newsletters by mail, please e-mail their name and mailing address.

4)    “Recommend It”

We have added a convenient feature to our web site’s home page titled “Recommend It”.  It’s near the top of the home page and any visitor can recommend our site to their colleagues or friends simply by clicking on the “Recommend It” logo.  Try it out; we need all the help we can get.

5)    Quote of the Month

"It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them"

J. Robert Oppenheimer; Scientific Director; The Manhattan Project

6)    Featured Book

Our featured book this month comes to us from the University of Illinois Press.  It is titled “Atomic Spaces” and is by Peter Bacon Hales, director of the American Studies Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  I’ve ordered it after reading some great reviews.

Please let me know if you want to order it; $ 34.95

7)      Profiles in Secrecy

Each month we are hearing from a variety of individuals who have a unique story to tell about their experiences working on the Manhattan Project.  Beginning in May, we will begin profiling these individuals in a special section of our web site.

 The Internet is full of stories about the major participants of the Manhattan Project; ie., Groves, Fermi, Oppenheimer, Szilard, Tibbets, etc.  But you won’t find stories about the typical chemical engineer working at the University of Chicago or Oak Ridge, the SED recruit working at Los Alamos, the Nurses assigned to the hospitals at Los Alamos and Hanford, the scientist working behind the scenes at giant corporations like Du Pont and Westinghouse, the Military Police assigned to provide security, the secretaries who kept everything organized, researchers at Columbia University and Berkeley, The list goes on and on. 

We are very sincere about this phase of our project and will be spending a lot of time and money over the next several months collecting information.  If you have a parent or friend, living or deceased, who you would like to see included in these profiles, please send an e-mail to me or have them contact me directly.

8)    “Copenhagen” – The Play

“’Copenhagen’ gives New York a play to think about”; so reads the headline in a recent article by Liz Smith:

“What an elegant outing last week at Barbetta’s, when three Nobel Prize winners attended a dinner given by the New York Hall of Science before and after a performance of Michael Frayn’s intriguing play, ‘Copenhagen’.”

“By now most of you know that this drama is about a 1941 meeting in Copenhagen during World War II, when the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg pays a visit to his mentor, Niels Bohr, and his wife, Margrethe, to discuss the possibilities of nuclear fission.  The Dane, Bohr, was living under Nazi occupation but soon would escape to lend his expertise to the Allied cause.  The German, Heisenberg, his former pupil, came either to warn him or to try to win him to the Nazi cause.  It’s hard to tell.”

“’Copenhagen’ demands concentration from its audience.  If you like to listen, learn and solve puzzles, you will absolutely love this drama with the atomic bomb as its background music.  Blair Brown, Philip Bosco, and Michael Cumpsty are all simply amazing in this tour de force.”

9)    Du Pont and the Manhattan Project

"The story of its construction and operation is a story of ingenuity, intelligent planning, and bold innovations in design and construction.  It is a story of action, sacrifice, high morale, and loyal, hard-working employees.  It is the epic of American industry's and American workers' answer to the challenge of a great emergency"

Press Release issued by the War Department; August 1945.

So reads this press release about Du Pont’s role as the primary force behind the construction and operation of the enormous Hanford Engineer Works.  For instance, the construction force itself reached an amazing 45,000 at its peak in June of 1944.

 If you haven’t checked our web site recently, we have just added a 5 page letter from the president of Dupont to all Du Pont employees thanking them for their tireless efforts working on the atomic bomb project.  This letter goes into detail as to how Du Pont was coerced into participating in the Manhattan Project.

10)           What’s Ahead?

As mentioned previously, our new “Profiles in Secrecy” will consume much time over the upcoming months.  Also, I have several documents that we will be adding in the near future.

 Our web site continues to grow in both size and complexity and has now grown beyond 10MB.  I have recently made arrangements to move our site to a “hosting” facility that supports larger storage requirements.  Anyone who has experience developing web sites knows that there are many “kinks” that have to be worked out when relocating a site, and I will be working on those over the next few weeks. 

Please continue to send any documents, photos, or information that you would like to see profiled on our web site.  We have reserved 60MB on the servers of our new host, so we have plenty of space. 

Again, thanks to all of you for your support.  Please e-mail me if you have any suggestions or questions about information appearing in this newsletter.

Thank you very much for your continued interest...

Joseph Calabrese e-mail: j_calabrese@angelfire.com