The First Pile: CP-1

This article is an edited and adapted version of a report, "The First Pile," which was written in Autumn 1946 because nowhere in the extensive records of the Manhattan Project was there a narrative history of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. The report was prepared for a press release by the Manhattan Engineer District and the article was published in Nuclear News, November 2002. (PDF format, 149 KB: http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/docs/2002-11-2.pdf )

The authors of "The First Pile," Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell, were two public information officers for the Atomic Energy Commission, the agency that succeeded the Manhattan Project on January 1, 1947. Allardice and Trapnell believed that the story of the experiment of Enrico Fermi and his team at the University of Chicago that achieved success on December 2, 1942, was of such significance that it should be written down while still relatively fresh in the minds of those who took part. Their report was based on postwar interviews with more than a dozen of the 50 scientists present at Stagg Field on that historic occasion.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

"The H-Bomb secret: How we got it, why we’re telling it"

When journalist Howard Morland wrote an article explaining how an H-Bomb is made, the United States Government took him to court. On March 9, 1979, Federal Judge Robert W. Warren of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, granted a temporary restraining order, followed later with an injunction, blocking The Progressive magazine from publishing the article. It was the first time in U.S. history that the government censored a publication on national security grounds. For the next six months and 19 days, The Progressive and its editors were prohibited, under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, from "publishing or otherwise communicating, transmitting or disclosing" the restricted information in the H-bomb article. It was a historic confrontation between the rights of the press and the power of the state. Morland showed that all the vital information was available in the Encyclopedia Americana — in an article written by Dr. Edward Teller, the "Father of the H-Bomb." In the end, the government dropped its case.

Howard Morland's article was published in the November 1979 issue of The Progressive. This is a reprint of the entire magazine with additional material added later. (PDF format, 3.5 MB: http://progressive.org/?q=node/2252 )

The German Uranium Project

Secret tape recordings made at Farm Hall in England, where German scientists were confined after World War II, show that Werner Heisenberg did not know how to calculate the critical mass of uranium in 1945, indicating that he did not work on atomic bombs during the war.

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