Richard Rhodes
Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb
BOOKS BY RICHARD RHODES
Sons of Earth
The Last Safari
Holy Secrets
The Ungodly
How to Write
Nuclear Renewal
Making Love
A Hole in the World
Farm
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Looking for America
The Inland Ground
Acknowledgments
Arthur Lawrence Norberg interviews with Norris Bradbury, Darol Froman, John Manley, J. Carson Mark and Raemer Schreiber quoted by permission of The Bancroft Library.
Excerpts from
Excerpts from
Excerpts from Yuli Khariton and Yuri Smirnov, “The Khariton Version,”
Excerpts from the unpublished papers of John Manley quoted by permission of Kathleen B. Manley; of Raemer Schreiber quoted by permission of Raemer Schreiber.
Excerpts from Ilya Ehrenburg and Konstantin Simonov,
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FOR ARTHUR L. SINGER, JR.
THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED AS PART OF AN ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION PROGRAM
Preface to the Sloan
Technology is the application of science, engineering and industrial organization to create a human-built world. It has led, in developed nations, to a standard of living inconceivable a hundred years ago. The process, however, is not free of stress; by its very nature, technology brings change in society and undermines convention. It affects virtually every aspect of human endeavor: private and public institutions, economic systems, communications networks, political structures, international affiliations, the organization of societies and the condition of human lives. The effects are not one-way; just as technology changes society, so too do societal structures, attitudes and mores affect technology. But perhaps because technology is so rapidly and completely assimilated, the profound interplay of technology and other social endeavors in modern history has not been sufficiently recognized.
The Sloan Foundation has had a long-standing interest in deepening public understanding about modern technology, its origins and its impact on our lives. The Sloan Technology Series, of which the present volume is a part, seeks to present to the general reader the stories of the development of critical twentieth-century technologies. The aim of the series is to convey both the technical and human dimensions of the subject: the invention and effort entailed in devising the technologies and the comforts and stresses they have introduced into contemporary life. As the century draws to an end, it is hoped that the Series will disclose a past that might provide perspective on the present and inform the future.
The Foundation has been guided in its development of the Sloan Technology Series by a distinguished advisory committee. We express deep gratitude to John Armstrong, S. Michael Bessie, Samuel Y. Gibbon, Thomas P. Hughes, Victor McElheny, Robert K. Merton, Elting E. Morison and Richard Rhodes. The Foundation has been represented on the committee by Ralph E. Gomory, Arthur L. Singer, Jr., Hirsh G. Cohen, Raphael G. Kasper and A. Frank Mayadas.
Fundamentally, and in the long run, the problem which is posed by the release of atomic energy is a problem of the ability of the human race to govern itself without war.
Prologue: Deliveries
The war was over. The troops were coming home. Sick of mud and olive drab, of saltwater showers and sweltering holds, twelve million American soldiers and sailors counted their service points to see how soon they could ship out for Brooklyn and Ukiah and St. Joe. Tens of thousands of warplanes, ships, tanks, artillery pieces sat abandoned, the full industrial output of a prosperous nation, the work the women and the older men had done, soon to be junked. The Second World War had been the most destructive war in history, obliterating fifty-five million human lives. The German invasion of the Soviet Union and the obdurate Soviet response had accounted for more
