No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with an intensity many times greater than that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue.
The words of Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell describe the onset of the atomic age, which began on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. This was the site of the first large-scale atomic test, which utilized the tool of destruction that would soon decimate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month afterwards. This test consummated the years spent developing the bomb and was the end result of the efforts of nuclear scientists who constructed it, and those of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who made the decision to fund the so-called Manhattan Project.”
In a letter dated August 2nd, 1939, Albert Einstein informed President Roosevelt of the research done by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard with unstable Uranium, which could generate large amounts of power and energy. Einstein also included another possible use for the uranium- the construction of extremely powerful bombs capable of destroying a seaport and the surrounding territory. This information may have come precisely at the right time, for in October of 1938, Roosevelt asked Congress for a $300 million military appropriation, and in November instructed the Army Air Corps to plan for an annual production of twenty thousand planes. Later, in 1939, Roosevelt called for actions against aggressor nations” and submitted to Congress a $1 billion defense budget.
The defense budget is 3 billion (Boyer861). Leo Szilard, a scientist, explained the technical science of nuclear fission and stressed the importance of chain reactions in an accompanying memorandum that was sent with the Einstein letter (Walls 1 PFS Safe Files). Alexander Sachs, an adviser to Roosevelt’s New Deal since 1933, was to deliver both documents to Roosevelt and the government (Lanouette 200). Sachs finally got an invitation to see the President over breakfast in mid-October 1939 (Burns 250). Roosevelt found the documents interesting but was hesitant about committing government funds to speculative research. Sachs reminded him of Napoleon’s skepticism of Robert Fulton’s idea of a steamship, and Roosevelt agreed to proceed.
Regarding the steamship issue, Sachs commented, This is an example of how England was saved by the shortsightedness of an adversary.” This insight greatly influenced Roosevelt’s consideration of the creation of the bomb. President Roosevelt authorized a study, but the decision to devote full energy to the production of the bomb was not made until December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The influence of Leo Szilard and Alexander Sachs swayed Roosevelt’s decision to fund and construct the bomb. To aid the presentation to President Roosevelt, Szilard contacted aviator Charles Lindbergh to discuss how “large quantities of energy would be liberated” by a “nuclear chain reaction” and also wanted to discuss how to inform the administration of the project.
Soon after, however, they discovered that the anti-arms Lindbergh was not one to help them in their request to the President (Lanouette 208). Szilard then went on a mission to find pure graphite for the experiment, which would be based on Einstein’s E=mc2. He exchanged dozens of letters with chemical, carbon, and metallurgical companies, and bargained with manufacturers for contracts of fresh material (Lanouette 209). During this time, Szilard was creating a decisive difference between U.S. and German nuclear efforts.
Szilard inquired Colonel Keith F. Adamson of the U.S. Army about funding for the graphite and uranium required for a large-scale experiment. Adamson estimated that it might only cost $6,000, but this sum eventually swelled to more than $2 billion of funds from the U.S. government (Lanouette 211).
Although Einstein later said that he really only acted as a mailbox” for Leo Szilard, in popular history, his famous equation E=mc2 and his letter to President Roosevelt are credited with starting the American effort to build atomic weapons (Lanouette 206). Fission was discovered in 1938 by German scientists, which led to the fear of American scientists that Hitler might attempt to develop a fission bomb.
Because of German aggression throughout Europe in 1938-39, Roosevelt and the scientists thought it necessary to develop the bomb before the Germans. Fortunately for the United States bomb effort, many of the world’s top scientists from both Europe and the U.S. pooled their expertise.
