4 ms·
Making the atomic bomb scores pretty high on the evil-genius scale.
by hthh 10y ago
Making the atomic bomb scores pretty high on the evil-genius scale.
- yoloswagins 10y agoFun fact, Feynman didn't work directly on the bomb. His role was managing high school students who performed computations, fixing adding machines, and did some safety work at the uranium isotope plant in Tennessee. [1] https://robertlovespi.net/2014/09/07/how-richard-feynman-saved-eastern-tennessee-from-getting-nuked/ https://robertlovespi.net/2014/09/07/how-richard-feynman-sav...
- bkanber 10y agoMore fun facts: almost nobody worked directly on the bomb. Thousands of people worked on manufacturing equipment and components and had no idea what they were supposed to be building. They split the project up into very granular pieces so that nobody really had full insight into what was going on except for the core group of scientists. (Source for this I believe is Feynman himself in Surely You're Joking)
- at-fates-hands 10y agoThey have several examples of this on the Wikipedia page, but this one struck me when I saw it some years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#/media/File:Y12_Calutron_Operators.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#/media/File:... Gladys Owens, the woman seated in the foreground, did not know what she had been involved with until seeing this photo in a public tour of the facility fifty years later.
- srean 10y agoFeynman is one of the coolest guys in my books, but do note that "didn't work directly on the holocaust...was just counting beans to facilitate" was not a defense that saved necks, they were hanged. No moral judgement implied here, just the fact that history is written by winners.