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Reminds me of my favorite story from the Manhattan project: The project needed massive amounts of wire for all the equipment, but copper was in short supply for
by 00N8 2y ago
Reminds me of my favorite story from the Manhattan project: The project needed massive amounts of wire for all the equipment, but copper was in short supply for the war effort. They ended up working out a deal with the Treasury Department to use silver instead, since it was an even better conductor & apparently more available at the time. Part of the deal involved making sure not to lose any silver & IIRC they managed to not only return all the borrowed silver, they even found some extra to return by tearing up the floors in all the mints, warehouses & workshops, to incinerate & reclaim the precious metal, just like in the article!
- dredmorbius 2y agoDo you have a source on that? I'm finding "The Manhattan Project: the Important Role Silver Played In the Building of the Atomic Bomb" <https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Manhattan-Project-and-The-Borrowed-Silver https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Manhattan-Projec...> (2015).
- 00N8 2y agoI think I first heard about it in a Scott Manley video - maybe this one, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JNT28WKAxgs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JNT28WKAxgs - & read more on Wikipedia & possibly elsewhere
- glompers 2y agoHere's a more official source: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1944_ur/y-12_construction.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... Groves' deputy, Nichols, who was responsible for the loan, also told the story in more detail in 1987 memoir, "The Road to Trinity."
- glompers 2y agoDirectly related to recapture of gold -- and related to the Manhattan Project by Farm Hall [0] too -- is the tale of German objector Max von Laue's Nobel Prize medal, which was dissolved during WWII and recast out of solution afterward [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Post-war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Post-war [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Hidden_Nobel_prize https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Hidden_Nobel_pr...
- dredmorbius 2y agoThanks!
- jaggederest 2y agoAnother fun Manhattan fact: They needed a code name for plutonium, so they called it "copper", but what was a poor scientist or engineer who needed to use actual copper to do? The official code name for copper was "Honest-to-God copper".
- thinkfaster 2y agoAnd they wondered how the Soviets infiltrated the project so thoroughly.
- drunkonvinyl 2y agoNothing like H2GCu. It’s even just pennies on the dollar.
- fbdab103 2y agoI am intrigued at how much thought went into "copper". Was the thinking that everyone's eyes would glaze over at such a common material? My initial reaction would be to use a different rare element. However, a rare element might draw more scrutiny to the casual observer. Then again, the potential for confusion is incredibly high. Interesting spycraft. Supposedly the opsec at the Manhattan Project was so good, significant portions of the workforce had no idea on what they were laboring. Post war interviews thought the facility was all a sham, dedicated to nothing but medical testing.
- retrac 2y agoThere is a story to go with that story. The colonel responsible for the negotiations with the Treasury would later recall: > He explained the procedure for transferring the silver and asked, "How much do you need?" I replied, "6000 tons." > "How many troy ounces is that?" he asked. In fact, I did not know how to convert troy ounces to tons, and neither did he. A little impatient, I responded, "I don't know how many troy ounces we need, but I know I need 6000 tons - that is a definite quantity. What difference does it matter how we express the quantity?" > He replied rather indignantly, "Young man, you may think of silver in tons, but the Treasury will always think of silver in troy ounces."
- michaelmcdonald 2y agoFor those wondering like me: 6000 metric tons of silver is approximately 192,904,200 troy ounces, and 6000 US tons of silver is approximately 175,000,000 troy ounces.
- mads 2y agoThere is a US ton? My God...
- lobsterthief 2y agoYes, many of us Americans wish we would adopt the metric system.
- dghughes 2y agoYou did. All your (USA) units use metric then are converted to US measurements. The US inch is officially 25.4mm exactly. https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/si-units-length https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/si-units-length
- ddingus 2y agoYup. And more things are SI units every day. I use them most of time now. We are getting there slowly.