What remains of the Manhattan Project | Hacker News Reader

What remains of the Manhattan Project

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

49 pointsbeefman13 comments

I stumbled upon one remnant of the Manhattan Project at my university's machine shop a couple of years ago. In the machine shop is a row of boxy modern lathes, with one beautiful curved older lathe at the end of the row. Without fail, when working with precise designs, the veteran machinist of the shop always used that older lathe.

When I asked him about this he explained to me that prior to WW2 most of the world's precision lathes had been made in Germany. Unfortunately, the large quantities of precisely machined components needed for the Manhattan Project came right when those lathes were no longer available! The company designed the lathe in an incredibly short amount of time to meet those needs. The school bought the lathe at a surplus auction after the war for cheaper than any of the other lathes, and even 70 years later it remains the best.

Here's what it looked like: http://www.galleryofmachines.com/gallery'sdigitalphotos/Lath...

Ah, a Monarch EE series lathe. Those are still available.[1] The newer models have a variable-speed AC motor and a digital readout, but are otherwise the same. The speed control system went through many generations, starting as a huge hydraulic transmission and going through motor-generator and thyratron versions. (High-power adjustable-speed motors were hard to do before semiconductors.) There were lots of variations in WWII versions, depending on parts shortages. Flat belts, V-belts, different speed controls, different materials for non-critical parts like data plates - that sort of thing.

The Monarch EE series begin in 1939. The later model shown came out in 1944-1945.[2] The one shown has a 1945 date on its data plate.

It's not specific to the Manhattan Project. Those things turned many high-precision parts during WWII.

[1] http://www.monarchlathe.com/products/lathes/toolroom/monarch... [2] http://www.lathes.co.uk/monarch/page2.html

m0wfo, it looks like you're shadowbanned. I'm not sure why looking at your post history. They said:

> I admit- I got immediately distracted by a sub-link about the overall adjusted cost of the project, where the claimed figure in today's money was $30B. Out of curiosity, I looked up the total cost to date of the F-22 program (which has taken a hell of a lot longer to ship) and the gospel according to Wikipedia claims it's $66.7B. Is there something to be said for shipping under pressure? ;)

Maybe contact a mod to find out why.

He was shadowbanned for good cause a very long time ago.

In partial answer to his question, the Manhattan Project wasn't trying to create a polished weapon, and the weapons it created were very crude and not very many steps from the lab bench. The F-22 also had a goal of totally outclassing the previous generation of air superiority fighters, which it handily does; compare to our first operation jet fighter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-80_Shooting_Star

ADDED: From the Wikipedia article; we aren't comparing the same thing at all:

It was estimated by the end of production, $34 billion will have been spent on procurement, resulting in a total program cost of $62 billion....

So more like $34 billion for R&D and all the units manufactured. I think total program cost is what it'll take to keep the fleet flying until they're retired, e.g. engine repair and replacement, maybe even an avionics mid-life kicker.

Wonder Woman used to fly a P-80:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fo_miq__gnc/Tt_1zSHQ8gI/AAAAAAAACv...

http://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Wonder-Woman-J...

I read somewhere that the Manhattan Project at point used up 1/7 of all electricity available in US.

Astounding.

Towards the end of the article is this:

Upon learning about the scale of the project in 1944, Niels Bohr told Edward Teller: “I told you it couldn’t be done without turning the whole country into a factory. You have done just that.”

Another perspective: during World War 2, about 1 in every 250 Americans worked for the Manhattan Project at some point.

Here is a really good documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwpgmEvlRpM

Does anyone know any other documentaries about this topic? It's a fascinating event to study.

> Does anyone know any other documentaries about this topic? It's a fascinating event to study.

"The Day After Trinity" (1981) is a really, really good documentary on the Manhattan Project. I like that it goes in depth about the characters involved, too -- Oppenheimer was a fascinating person.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080594/

Also on youtube in 4 parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2mVC2Hn3qs

Not a documentary but there's a fantastic book called The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. The book also covers the history of nuclear physics.

What is a lucite hemisphere? How was it used? Was it actually a mold?

>There was also a very surprising artifact brought by one of the veterans: a lucite hemisphere with pieces of Trinitite embedded in it. The Trinitite is not so rare, but the lucite was cast in the same mold that made the plutonium pits for the Trinity and Fat Man bombs, and included the small hold [sic] for the neutron initiator.

The lucite object appears to be more of a momento [edit: in the exact shape] of the kernel of the fission process than a usable thing.

Trinitite is sand fused into glass from the heat of the first fission device at Trinity Site, New Mexico.

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