| "Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries of the sciences are among the great epics" - J. Robert Oppenheimer |
Never before and, more than likely, never again will a nation with the resources of the United States be so committed to a single purpose. Once the funding for the Manhattan Project was authorized by President Franklin Roosevelt in December 1942, the floodgates were opened on the largest construction project in world history. In fact, more than fifty years later, we, as a nation, would be hard-pressed to achieve similar results. As you will see as you progress through this narrative, there was still much that was not known. Decisions had to be made on the spur of the moment with only sketchy facts to back them up. Also, traditional methods of taking a process from the drawing table into the field had to be abandoned in the interest of time. Thus, if three particular options were available for a particular design or construction phase, it was often necessary to work on all three, later abandoning two. Another huge factor was that American industry was being asked to design and manufacture equipment that went way beyond the tolerances that anyone had previously thought possible. From magnets to vacuum pumps, from welding seams to sterile operating conditions, every new production operation demanded new technology. Thus, many of the production processes that are prevalent today had their origins in the Manhattan Project.
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