The Calutron Girls: The Women Who Helped Build the Bomb
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Beats working for the TVA, I suppose.
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Sources:
Kiernan, Denise, The Girls of Atomic City, Simon & Schuster, NY, 2013
Preston, Diana, Before the Fallout, Walker & Company, NY, 2005
Gladys Owens: ‘Calutron’ Technician Who Changed the World, Technicians Make it Happen, July 18, 2019, www.technician...
“The Calutron Girls,” smithdray1.net/...
Who Were the Calutron Girls of Oak Ridge? Explore Oak Ridge, exploreoakridg...
Henderson, Nancy, Girl Power, Circa 1940: Building The Bomb (and Not Knowing It) in East Tennessee, BlueRidge County, blueridgecount...
I wonder if Gilles ever gets jealous of Danny and Callum, but then I realize Gilles doesn't have to live in the Blazement.
So really, who's jealous of whom?
You do realize Gilles & Callum are not real people. They are all Danny who lives in Simon's basement and will never be set free.
@@Albinoafroman316 ...alledgedly
Big Robert Heinlein fan. In one of his stories he writes about the close monitoring needed for a certain atomic energy reaction. It was monitored by engineers and PhD's (all men) and they kept going insane, wanting to destroy the machine.
Side line story was two men who were moved off the project who decided to start their own research project looking for a safe, stable source of energy. They figured it could take decades, but if they had a good research design, later researchers could build on their work.
-- They found a solution on their second try.
-- The story and their research design is also a chemistry design, not molecular. Lots of people, even Heinlein, had trouble adapting to the idea that atomic energy was COMPLETELY NEW. It's why, I think, so many "tests" were done. Everyone had to be convinced over and over again that this was real.
Anyhow, the description of monitoring the machines in your video sounds a lot like Heinlein's description.
Which is not terribly surprising. Heinlein was an Annapolis graduate and an engineer, retired early for medical disability. During WW II he worked on several top secret projects; later he started writing scifi.
Heinlein started out as a professional writer a couple of years before United States got involved in World War II. But yes, all this was extremely secret, which is why even a trained engineer like Heinlein didn't really grasp how nuclear energy was going to work.
In his 1941 short story "Solution Unsatisfactory," he contemplates weaponizing radioactive material by converting it into a dust that could be spread over a wide area. The idea of a nuclear bomb simply never occurred to him, and wouldn't have occurred to anyone apart from a very few top physicists.
a few years ago, i met the Calutron Girl in the picture at the same Calutron on tour. the facity (before covid) was open about once a year for a public tour.
Now that’s a piece of history I never thought about- who enriched the uranium? My parents were contemporaries of these women and it was certainly an era where many had mixed feelings about doing what needed to be done. Maybe it’s that making up your mind and shouldering the load to get the job done made for what is sometimes called the greatest generation
It was at the Hanford site in eastern washington. Theyve got parts of it turned into a museum. They also once purposefully vented irradiated gas into the air to study the effects of fallout during the cold war.
On one occasion, Richard Feynman was sent out from Los Alamos to inspect Oak Ridge to see if he could smooth out some of their productions problems. Among his findings he discovered that, since none of the workers at the plant had any idea what they were actually doing, they were taking massive risks without knowing it. For example, they assumed that they could keep supplies of uranium -- which needed to be spaced out to ensure it would remain subcritical -- in different rooms. But not understanding that radioactivity could penetrate walls, they'd keep containers on opposite sides of the same wall so they were effectively right next to each other.
So all that secrecy might not have been the best idea.
From what I've heard the top officials thought the importance of secrecy trumped everything else. Theres a story that when transporting vital parts for the bomb the guards were taught to shoot anyone who looked into the trucks, even if stopped by police. People working in the project were often even kept in the dark about whether radiation was involved and people at different sites were even told they were working on different things like radar, computers, or other electronics.
@@arthas640 Meanwhile there was a spy in their midst the entire time, Klaus Fuchs. Feynman borrowed his car to visit his hospitalized wife in Albuquerque. And the safes were such poor quality that Feynman regularly broke into them just for fun. One of the top ranking army officers had a top-of-the-line safe installed in his office, but never had the combination changed from the factory setting.
@@the-chillian proof of why they were properly paranoid. The Soviets and CCP became far more bold on the political landscape once they got their own nuclear protection and didnt need to worry about a single america bomber leveling their capital and could retaliate in kind. The soviets werent smart enough to do it themselves so they stole British, American, and German tech and the chinese stole from the Soviets, that way the soviets and CCP could ensure their empires didnt need to invest tons into R&D like the allies and axis did but could reap all the rewards. If anything the allies werent paranoid enough about security since they had Soviets spying on them since day one when they decided collaborating with the Soviets was worth the risk of allowing spies in, rather continuing their bolshevik era red scare and purging enemy agents.
@@arthas640 They were right to be cautious. But they were evidently looking in the wrong place.
How has this channel only got just over 160k subs. Surely all the BB legends would be more than that on their own 🤔
Problem is that it often goes more than a year without an upload
He's got so many damn channels it can be difficult keeping track of which ones you've subscribed to lol
@@unoriginalsyn I'm subbed to all of them. Waiting to finally be able to subscribe to the next one 😂
Hes got WAY too many channels that are doing similar subjects. It's likely many fans domy even sub to all of them and all his subs dont watch all the videos since its hard to keep track of and most of us hate "ringing the bell"
2nd highlight history in 2 months? You spoil us!
lol we need more ;) come on blaze boi
The unlucky USS Indianapolis. Sunk by a Japanese submarine on her return trip from delivering those bomb parts.
I watched a film about that years ago, haunted me ever since.
Poor blokes stuck in the sea getting picked off by sharks. They mention it in Jaws.
We should have more episodes about the jobs women did for all sides during WWI and WWII.
All the jobs that the men stopped doing because they were at war. the end. you're welcome.
What? Made sandwiches!?🤦🤦🤦
Agreed! ❣
@@MuhammadAli-uv9lf Oh the ignorance of your comment is just wow.
The Indianapolis, the ship that delivered the bomb casing to the Tinian Islands, met a rather tragic end. Because the delivery was supposed to be a secret, the navy did not know where they were when the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese sub. Because of violent currents, when the crew abandoned ship they were strung out from each other over several miles of ocean. Many of the injured crewmen were killed by sharks or bled out. Without adequate food or water, many died. Finally, the survivors were rescued, but much of the crew died
Read a book on Oak Ridge. Page turner. And sadly the Indianapolis didn’t make it home. I am from Indianapolis.
My grandmother was a Calutron girl. She told us many years before she passed but I was surprised she had kept it to herself as long as she did. She would watch the dials and keep them in the proper position (adjust if necessary).
Nice to see a new video pop up on this channel. Welcome back
This channel doesn't get nearly enough love. Thanks for this!
Well it hasn't had a video in over a month before this. I thought it was extinct.
Imagine hiding that, for all those years. Even from your kids.
Like, what if your kids needed help on a project about WW2?
Some of these folk never told anybody anything. My father told me about his work on the Norden bomb sight three days before he passed on, saying, "I don't think they will do anything about that now."
Just came here from watching the heartbreaking atrocities of the Vietnam war on Simon's other channel . Totally different tone .
Love this channel!
It is intresting to think about how many people were affectied by those first two atom bombs
Um, everyone. Everyone since, anyway.
The "wartime stranded power" of the newly built TVA hydro power dams was a principal reason for locating the huge power consuming atomic enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge. A working working plutonium bomb was vital to win the war because Japanese nuclear scientists would be able to advise their government almost instantly that USA uranium bomb production would likely be no more than one or two a year tops. When postwar "U bomb" production got into full swing, the enrichment facilities were consuming about 14% of all the power being generated overnight in the whole country.
Well she died from drinking some moonshine 😂😂😂😂😂😂! Get back to work! That’s how you handle your employees!😂😂😂
Gladys, and all the other women who worked on the project, should consider themselves heroes. Period.
My son worked for the dept of energy. They now run the Y12 facility and he still doesn’t talk about what he did there. Oak Ridge Tennessee didn’t exist in any map of the United States until the mid seventies.
The unincorporated town of Oak Ridge was on the map in 1947. It was granted a city charter and incorporated as the city of Oak Ridge in 1959. I have a Tennessee state map from 1962, and it is clearly on there.
When the USS Indianapolis sank there were ultimately 317 survivors. The current area code for Indianapolis-area phones is 317
My favorite whistle boy channel & she only gets new videos erry couple of months 😆
One story that is not generally know . When the US Navy captured a German U-Boat bound for Japan with war stores late in the war . They discovered part of it's cargo was Uranium . Being there was such a shortage of it for the US bomb. It was used in the one of the bomb that was dropped on Japan . You could say the USA very obliging delivered it to Japan for the Germans, airmail !
Japanese culture was suffused with the principle of "never quit." It probably exists today. But indeed such an inexorable force had to be met with a sufficiently immovable entity to stop them. They were a juggernaut despite their small population.
My understanding of war is that service people carry out their orders with enough force to stop their opponent, whether rendering their operations unworkable or killing soldiers. (I will not argue individual cases.)
Like Bruce Lee says, if a man is determined to bite your nose off, he will suffer all kinds of injury doing it, but he will not stop till he has bitten your nose off. This is the kind of inexorable mindset that soldiers dealt with when facing WWII Japanese soldiers.
Very interesting Simon, thanks you.
Mind you, it would take 3 years for the 'first bomb' - but afterwards the uranium isotope would continue to pour out for the remainder of the cold war. It's essentially waiting for the first droplet from a firehose. It also helped that future calculations and tests showed less Uranium and Plutonium was required for critical mass.
OMG this channel is alive
I would like to hear the story of how the enriched material was transported from Tennessee to Los Alamos. Unfortunately the people who knew the details are probably all dead.
They drove the stuff. FBI agents carried it in a little wooden box. There are pictures of this.
15NOV2021 - I worked at ORNL (X-10) in Oak Ridge. The Calutron Girls are legend there. When people ask me what I did I just make something up. It's not like they are going to fact check me. I really enjoyed my time there but I'm equally glad my contract ran out after a while. The place is inherently toxic with lots of cancer occurrences. The K-25 plant (5:18) was just recently decommissioned and now is completely gone. I remember driving by it years ago and was awestruck by the size of it. It was the biggest building I've ever seen. You can't describe it accurately. Working in Oak Ridge was one of the most eye opening events of my life and when I tell you the smartest people in the world are there, I'm not kidding. At one point it had the highest number of PhD's per capita in the world. When people want to know what it was like to work in a place like that I tell them the day starts out by walking past guards with machine guns to get to my office. It just got weirder from there. Good times. When in town, go to Big Ed's Pizza.
Excellent video!
Is it bad that I can tell when the Factboy has trimmed his beard?
"We changed the world."
The first time I looked at this I thought it read " The Cauldron Girls" Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble 🤣
I did a college paper on the use of the A-Bombs on Japan. (1996, Pre Internet days) I used 9 or 10 books and I was shocked by how little they knew about things like Radiation Poisoning, various safety measures, etc.!!!
Much later (just before he died) I found out that one of my paternal uncles actually worked on parts of A-Bombs and H-Bombs by putting precise thickness of metal plating onto another metal... (however, he never told me exactly what metals!! I guess that the Secrecy of Design still was in his mind... Well in to 2005!
Please PLEASE do a video on the British atomic testing at MARALINGA - its a tiny spot in Australia where the British did a lot of their above ground atomic testing and didn't tell the Australian Government what they were doing. There were indigenous people living in the area who were totally disregarded and the British didn't admit to anything until the 1970's.
Wasn't there a movie starring Donald Pleasaence made about those tests or something? In the '80s.
Highlight History I have missed thee! Welcome back into my happy bosom
It always amazes me how smart some people are.
I know Simon is the best.
@@Dr.RichardBanks I think you misunderstood her to make a joke, she clearly meant Hitler who made it all possible in the end
@@miroslavhoudek7085 I didn't misunderstand anything _fedboi_
Simon you should do a video on St. Louis who also processed Uranium and Plutonium but are still feeling the effects.
Correction, it was not Pu 238 but Pu 240 which is more reactive and leads to premature detonation, ie fizzle. Therefore, the Pu core must be imploded, ie the beta phase of the crystal structure of reduced density with gallium stabilization is compressed into a state of high density, passing into a critical mass. The Pu 240 content is directly related to the neutron flux and exposure time in the reactor.
Pu 238 is used in RTG.
yeah this channel is still alive :)
Always enjoy learning know facts from history from you.🌹
Good video 👍
Um, unfortunately the captions are in Dutch? So I can’t watch this one and understand what you are saying :(
Simon needs to come out with a rap more of a brain blaze thing but still
Mistake at 9:12. The plutonium contained Pu240 not 238. The Pu240 is a neutron source and could cause a premature detonation of the Pu239. The first samples of plutonium were made using E.O. Lawrence's cyclotron and they did not contain large amounts of Pu240. The first large plutonium sample coming from a reactor exhibited the Pu240 problem because the increase in neutrons bombarding the U238 caused some of the Pu239 to capture an additional neutron making Pu240.
Seriously should do episode somewhere explaining American Pie
Women are amazing. Salute.
Agreed.
Would love to see a story done on the Mitchell bombing deaths - the only WWII deaths in the continental US. A group of mostly children were killed by a weather balloon bomb near Bly Oregon. It is both fascinating and heartbreaking.
Excellent video! 👍👍
The clip at 9:43 is *NOT THE TRINITY BOMB!*
Instead, it is the kiloton test at Bikini Atoll. COME ON SAIMAHN!
Fascinating :)
2:37 oops 🤭
Oakridge TN is still interesting.
Holy shi- a new Highlight History video! Awesome!
Thanks
You should do a story about whether the bombs actually did end the war. I don't believe they did but I would love to see one of your channels lay out the facts.
you believe wrong
Well, for one Japanese soldier. it didn't. It was like 50 years before he surrendered.
If you want to prove it to yourself, read two books. The first is "140 Days to Hiroshima," and the second is "Downfall: The End of the Japanese Empire." The first book goes into the decisions made by the Japanese government for the 140 days preceding the use of the first atomic bomb. The second book, details Japanese and U.S. assumptions and preparations for the invasion of Japan with extreme detail and includes both MAGIC decryptions of Japanese diplomatic messages and Ultra decryptions of Japanese military communications. Both books will prove that the use of the atomic bombs convinced the Emperor to surrender, and demonstrated the futility of continuing the war to the military oligarchy ruling Japan. If you think the main reason was Russia entering Manchuria on August 9, 1945, the Japanese anticipated that move by the Russians as early as February of 1945.
The English CC is not working. And I am deaf. :-(
Fantastic video. Can we get captions in something other than Dutch?
2:37 "when young one girl"?
You mean; one going girl.
My great uncle worked in Los Alamos on the bombs. Still have family in the area.
Well done. By the way, you should think about starting some more RUclips channels...
I don't think he could handle another one, allegedly.
im starting to believe he cloned himself to manage all of these channels
@@HaveRandomQuestions video on the cloning process will be out on his new channel friday! Just kidding, or am I?
Allegedly number 13 is coming soon. It'll be on podcast apps tomorrow and soon on RUclips. Decoding the unknown
Fact Boy reads nursery rhymes.
These women saved the lives of hundreds of thousands.
The invasion of mainland Japan was established to cost 1,000,000 allied troops alone.
They are hero’s
This modern day bashing of the bombings is from ignorance of the time and situation.
If you let your mouth run outside of it, you disappeared.
The story is amazing, but the outcome put the world in a very strange place.
They were better at their tasks than the scientists because they didn't overthink it just sat there numbingly doing the same thing day and ending out like assembly line workers don't know what's so special about that.
It's amazing that they managed to get people to do work they had no idea what the reason was for, and got them to do it better than the people who did know what it was for! I've come to the conclusion that the two atomic bombs that we, the United States, dropped was a terrible option that prevented far more lives from being taken in a full scale invasion of Japan. I believe that at some point humanity was going to discover how to make atomic weapons, and it was either going to stop a war at a terrible price, or be used at another point with potentially worse concequences. I wish we had followed a timeline where the US shared evidence we had created a nuclear bomb with Japan by showing the trinity test videos, and they had surrendered as a result, and the world agreed that nobody should have power like that. We then enforced a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons.
I would betvon Hillbilly Girks every time!
*One minute in* Jesus, no pressure though.
🙌🏻
When I was in the Air Force, I was in the career field, "Aircrew Flight Equipment" (formerly known as "Aircrew Life Support"); during that time, my Superior NCO had informed me one night over drinks at his house off duty, that the aircraft Enola Gay dropped the bomb over Hiroshima because it did not have the power to escape the blast, and that an identical aircraft was the one that truly dropped the bomb over Hiroshima. I DID NOT, AND DO NOT, BELIEVE THAT STORY. But, I DO know what level of security clearance he had (he is now many-years-retired), and have never known him to be a bullshiter. He did not mention Nagasaki in that regard. That being said, I would not put it past the U.S. Military/U.S. Government to have carried out the objective in that manner. I wonder what Fact Boi & Ci can come up with...
Why would the US Air Force lie - what was the motive? Find me a motive and I might believe the story. Another possible conspiracy is the death of Heinrich Himmler. It is said he took a cyanide pill shortly after being arrested by the British military. However a soldier said on his deathbed that he was actually killed by being beaten to death by a British NCO whilst in custody. Photos of him taken after his death show bruising on his face.
@@Simonsvids Like I said, I don't believe the story. But, the story would have been concocted to save face during the war. Furthermore, if the aircraft didn't have enough power to escape while the bomb was falling, a parachute would have been attached to the bomb just like with the Tsar Bomba of Russia.
The criteria for the B29 to survive was that it could not be hit with a shockwave that exceeded the G-force design for the plane. That was a little over 2Gs of force. The plane dropped the bomb from 30,000 feet. The plane executed a 155-degree turn away from the bomb release point. The plane used its altitude to gain speed in the turn by a shallow dive and to aid in accelerating away from the detonation point. A B29 could fly 365 mph. The additional speed gained from the dive maneuver probably put the plane's speed around 420 mph. The bomb dropped from 30,000 feet and exploded at about 1800 feet. This makes the actual distance the hypotenuse of a triangle or longer than simply calculating a horizontal distance from the drop point to the airplane. Then the time the shock wave takes to get to the plane has to be calculated. The plane was 8+ miles from the bomb when it went off, and over 10 miles from the detonation point when it was hit by the first shockwave. For reference, there were PEOPLE monitoring the Trinity test at 10,000 yards from the detonation point and a viewing area for the scientists and others at 10 miles from the detonation point. The people 10 miles from the bomb were outdoors - they all survived the bomb blast.
Also, there were THREE planes for each flight. The plane carrying the bomb, an instrumentation plane, and a photographic plane. The instrumentation plane actually flew close to the bomb plane as it dropped instrument packages in tandem with the bomb. The photo plane was about one mile away when the bomb was dropped. All three planes had to execute the escape maneuver which was timed through a constant tone broadcast by the bomb plane that started 30 seconds before the bomb was dropped. When the tone stopped, the bomb was away and that was the signal for the planes to execute the escape maneuver.
So, your NCOs story is total BS.
@@buckhorncortez Thank you for disseminating the information to people who are not in the know. Like I said, I didn't believe it. I already knew aircraft and its crew would have been okay. And, when he drinks, he likes to add embellishments to damn-near anything he talks about.
If all 64 kg had gone up.....
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
So what is the benefit of having multiple channels?
Multiple paychecks.
Most men couldn't do it. Most, out of all the men on earth? Most of the men in the US? Did all of one particular group try it and fail? What group would that have been ?
7:10
Guess where I live.
Comment
Most women couldn't do it either
“Most men couldn’t do this job”. You provided nothing to support this, only that people who didn’t know what they were doing could be trained to adjust an instrument. What is your point?
Can you please please please, stop adding this "ye olde" film flaws?
The original material is already bad enough, without you adding more flaws, what does this add to the viewer experience?
The only effect it makes is to make the YT compression having a fit, making it even worse to watch
"Most men couldn't do this job"
Honestly now, would you write the same thing about women?...no.
You can uplift women without dragging down men, I've noticed this kind of thing seeping into Simon's videos lately when it never used to be like this.
There has been a ton of total bullshit in his other videos lately, stop with this modern trend of twisting history for modern sensibilities. History is harsh and unfair, things weren't the same as they are now, how can we learn if you just straight up lie about things to avoid hurting modern people's feelings?
I wonder how many men could concentrate on that task while on their menstrual period, wearing the kind of "protection" that was available at the time, having cramps.
Unfortunately I think it's all about the views and that trumps integrity. Wokeism is unfortunately popular and social media platforms like youtube heavily push it, so there's little incentive for Simon not to capitalize on that. I do hope this trend gets curbed a bit as Simon makes up for most of my youtube viewing, but if it does progress I can just trim back to just watching channels like Today I Found Out and Geographics which don't tend to have such slant.
Actually, in this case, it was 100% true. It was proven that women did a better job at this task than men. Henry Ford found exactly the same thing in manufacturing certain parts for his automobiles. Women were hired in preference to men for assembling carburetors and magnetos because they made fewer assembly errors with the smaller parts. The Ford information is detailed in several books including the study of Ford manufacturing techniques written in 1919 called, "Ford Methods and the Ford Shops."
@@buckhorncortez Women have smaller hands shocker!
@@All_Hail_Chael That's part of it, but in reading the Ford information, the women also had better concentration when doing fine assembly work. The Calutron information is detailed in several different books on the Manhattan project. The main difference is that the women did exactly what they were trained to do, where men attempted to "fix" a problem instead of simply reporting it to a supervisor. The Calutrons need a specifically balanced magnetic field for the separation to occur. If the process deviated too much, the products of an entire run could be lost. It would then take days to get the Calutrons running and balanced again. The fact the women were extremely conscientious at the task and did the work as they had been trained resulted in the success of that process.
My father-in-law was one of the PhD who worked on the project at Oak Ridge. My husband lived there with his family for 2 or 3 years when he was about 5. He talked about how the team at Oak Ridge was competing with the team at Los Alamos to see which one would develop the atomic bomb first. The Oak Ridge group felt very defeated and moved out of the area quickly when they lost the race.
That’s a bit muddled. Oak ridge did not do any bomb development, they separated U235, mostly. They didn’t know anything they didn’t need to know.
That title is immensely sexist. Imagine writing "Most women couldn't do this job". You would be kicked off RUclips and trending on aTwitter.
We acutely didn’t have to nuke Japan according to many historians and politicians