The Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project is a U.S. government research project that led to the production of the first atomic bomb. The same bomb that was used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war with Japan. The project occurred during 1942-1945, but started years before then. In 1938 three scientists, Dr.Otto Hahn, Dr. Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassman, discovered the splitting of an atom. They were experimenting with radioactivity and the men didn’t understand the results, but when Hahn met with and showed Meitner the results, she discovered that the atom (uranium) split into smaller atoms and released large amounts of energy. The atom went through nuclear fission. This led to the creation of objects ranging from nuclear power plants to the atomic bomb. In 1939 …show more content…
This was correct, Germany and its allies were attempting to create a nuclear weapon, but they were not having success. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, fled to the United States as tensions grew before World War II. They believed the president needed to be informed of the dangers of this discovery and what the Nazis could do with it. First Fermi traveled to Washington and warn the government officials, but many of them didn’t agree with his opinion. Later that year, Einstein urged by his colleagues write a letter to President Roosevelt persuading him to begin an atomic research program. Roosevelt didn’t believe there was a necessity for the project, but he allowed them to begin slowly. In February of 1940, the program was given $6000 to begin research with. They were under the supervision of the director of the National Bureau of Standards until December 1941 when the supervision was moved to Office of Scientific Research and Development. Once the U.S. entered World War II the War Department was given partial responsibility for the