InventorsNuclear InnovationsThe Atomic Bomb
Please don't build one at home. On August 2nd 1939, just before the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify U-235 with which might in turn be used to build an atomic bomb. It was shortly thereafter that the United States Government began the serious undertaking known only then as the Manhattan Project. Simply put, the Manhattan Project was committed to expedient research and production that would produce a viable atomic bomb.
Timeline of Nuclear Technology
1895 - Cloud chamber for tracking charged particles is invented. Wilhelm Roentgen discovers x-rays. The world immediately appreciates their medical potential. Within five years, for example, the British Army is using a mobile x-ray unit to locate bullets and shrapnel in wounded soldiers in the Sudan.
1898 -Marie Curie discovers the radioactive elements radium and polonium.
1905 -Albert Einstein develops theory about the relationship of mass and energy.
1911 -Georg von Hevesy conceives the idea of using radioactive tracers. This idea is later applied to, among other things, medical diagnosis. Von Hevesy wins the Nobel Prize in 1943.
1913 - Radiation detector is invented.
1925 - First cloud-chamber photographs of nuclear reactions.
1927 - Herman Blumgart, a Boston physician, first uses radioactive tracers to diagnose heart disease.
December 1938 - Two German scientists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, demonstrate nuclear fission.
August 1939 -Albert Einstein sends a letter to President Roosevelt informing him of German atomic research and the potential for a bomb. This letter prompts Roosevelt to form a special committee to investigate the military implications of atomic research.
September 1942-The Manhattan Project is formed to secretly build the atomic bomb before the Germans.
November 1942- Los Alamos is selected as the site for an atomic bomb laboratory. Robert Oppenheimer is named the director.
December 1942 -Enrico Fermidemonstrates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a lab under the squash court at the University of Chicago.
July 1945 - The United States explodes the first atomic device at a site near Alamagordo, New Mexico - the invention of the atomic bomb.
August 1945- The United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
December 1951- The first usable electricity from nuclear fission is produced at the National Reactor Station, later called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
1952 -Edward Teller and team build the hydrogen bomb.
January 1954 - The first nuclear submarine, U.S.S. Nautilus, is launched.
Famous Nuclear Physicists Neutronic Reactor
Enrico Fermi was the inventor of the neutronic reactor.
Cyclotron
Ernest Orlando Lawrence invented the cyclotron, a device that greatly increased the speed with which projectiles could be hurled at atomic nuclei.
Nuclear Fission
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman - Lise Meitner - Leo Sziland.
Viktor Schauberger
Father of the future - cold fusion energy, derived naturally and non-invasively from the simple use of air and water and the inventor of the first ever, non-energy consuming 'flying disc'.
