We are pleased to announce the addition of a Key Documents section to the Atomic Heritage Foundation website. Visitors may now access the original content of various primary and secondary sources relating to the Manhattan Project and the subsequent development of nuclear weapons following World War II.
A few highlights of the new Key Documents section include the Einstein-Szilard Letter to FDR, which was written to the President in 1939 to promote the creation of a program in the United States to further the study of atomic weapons. Einstein noted in the letter that due to breakthrough studies of scientists such as Szilard in the 1930s, “extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed,” adding that “a single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.”
The firsthand account of General Groves and his deputy Thomas Farrell witnessing the Trinity Test also provides insight into one of the Manhattan Project’s momentous events. Farrell described the experience as “unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before.”
Other key documents chronicle significant events in the development of nuclear weapons after World War II, including Niels Bohr’s open letter to the United Nations in 1950 and President Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations. We will continue to add more essential documents from the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Age in the coming months.