not yet spent on this project
The Uranium Committee sat in a drab seminar room, warm and smoky despite the open windows and the continuing thunderstorm outside. Elementary equations from an undergraduate course were chalked on the small blackboard. Kirby knew everybody who sat around table except for two uniformed military visitors: an Army colonel and a Navy captain. The scientists were in shirt-sleeves, some with ties off and sleeves rolled up. Lyman Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, was still chairman, and this further depressed Kirby. Briggs was a pleasant gray-haired bureau head to whom a thousand dollars was a spectacular Federal expenditure. He wore his coat and tie.
Dr. Lawrence gave Kirby a friendly wave and turned to the military men sitting beside him. “This is Dr. Kirby, president of Denver Electric Works — Colonel Thomas and Captain Kelleher.”
Kirby passed out copies of a mimeographed document and read the paper aloud, sometimes pausing for thunder crashes. The committee listened with narrow-eyed attention — all but Captain Kelleher, a bald chain smoker with a big double chin, who stared straight ahead in a slump, now and then scratching through his blue and gold uniform at one place on his chest. The Army colonel, a studious-looking small man with a bad cough, kept eating lozenges from a paper box, while he made shorthand notes on the margins of Kirby’s paper.
Kirby was replying to questions posed to him by Lawrence in the letter: could he manufacture these giant electric magnets, and if so, what would be the probable costs and production time? Lawrence’s idea — which he was pushing with the peculiar force and single-mindedness that made him loved or hated by other scientists — was to produce uranium 235 by separating a stream of ionized molecules of uranium in a magnetic field; a method Kirby had once described to Victor Henry. There already existed a laboratory tool, the mass spectrograph, that worked this way. Lawrence wanted to make giant mass spectrographs to get uranium 235 in sufficient quantities for war use. Nothing like it had ever been done. The whole notion required — among other things — monster electromagnets which would keep an unwavering field. The slightest voltage change would wash out the infinitesimal difference in the molecule paths of U-238 and U-235, on which the whole idea hung.
When Kirby named a feasible date for delivering the first magnets, and the range of prices he would charge, the committeemen started glancing at each other. He finished with a warning about supply problems requiring high priorities, and sat down. Lawrence was beaming at him through his round glasses.
“Well, that’s encouraging” Lyman Briggs said mildly, fingering his tie. “Of course, the price figures are still in the realm of pure fantasy.”
The Navy captain put in, “Dr. Kirby, we’ve had fellows from General Electric and Westinghouse report on this. They project twice as much time, more than twice as much money, and they shade those performance characteristics considerably.”
Palmer Kirby shrugged. “Could well be.”
“Why should we take your word on feasibility against theirs?” Colonel Thomas said hoarsely, shaking a lozenge out of his box.
Kirby said, “Colonel, I once worked at Westinghouse. They make everything that uses an electric current. I make custom-designed equipment, and I specialize in electromagnets. It’s a narrow specialty, but it’s mine. The Germans were way ahead of us at one point. I went to Germany. I studied their components and imported their nickel alloy cores. Westinghouse and General Electric don’t know that area of technology as I do. They don’t have to. For special jobs in electromagnetics I can outperform them. At least I’m claiming that I can, and I’m prepared to bid in these terms.”
When Palmer Kirby mentioned Germany, the glances went again around the table. The Navy captain spoke in a peevish voice. “Are the Germans still ahead of us?”
“On what, sir?”
“On anything. On making these bombs, to get down to the short hairs.”
Kirby puffed at his pipe. “Well, the self-confidence they’ve just showed isn’t encouraging.”
“I agree. Well, why don’t we get going then? All this committee seems to do is palaver.” Kelleher sat up straight up, glowering. “I’m not a scientist, and I can’t say I’ve taken much stock in these futuristic weapons, but by Christ if there’s anything in them let’s get cracking. Let’s go straight to the President and howl for money and action. I can assure you the Navy will back the committee.
Holding up a thin hand in dismay, Briggs said, “The President has more immediate things, Captain, requiring money and action.”
“I don’t agree,” Thomas said. “More immediate than these bombs?”
Briggs retorted, “It’s all pure theory, Colonel, years away from any possible practical result.”
Captain Kelleher slapped his hand on the table. “Look, let me ask a real dumb question. What’s Kirby talking about here? Is it the diffusion business, or the spectrograph business? Maybe I ought to know, but I don’t.”
“The spectrograph business,” Lawrence said in a fatherly tone.
“All right. Then, why don’t you just shoot the works on that? You’ve got a Nobel Prize. Why don’t you send the President a red-hot plain-language memo that he can grasp? Why do you keep fudging around on these other approaches?”
“Because if we guess wrong on the basic approach,” another scientist mildly observed, “we may lose several years.”
Kirby could not resist saying, “Or lose the whole race to the Germans.”
The discussion halted. The heavy drumming of the rain for a moment or two was the only sound. Briggs said, “Well! These things are still very iffy, as the President likes to say. We can’t be going off half-cocked in this business, that much is certain. In any case” — he turned to Kirby with an agreeable smile — “I don’t think we need to detain you. Your report has been very useful. Many thanks.”
Gathering up his papers, Kirby said, “Will you need me again, or do I go back to Denver?”
“Don’t rush off, Fred,” Lawrence said.
“Right. I’ll be at the Stevens.”
Kirby passed the morning in his hotel suite, listening to the radio bulletins and special reports on the invasion of Russia, and growing gloomier and gloomier. The incessant rain, with the sporadic lightning and thunder, reinforced his dark mood. He had not drunk before lunch in a long time, but he sent for a bottle of Scotch, and had it almost a third emptied when Lawrence called in high spirits. “Fred, you shone this morning. I thought we might manage lunch, but the committee’s sending out for coffee and sandwiches, and working straight on through. Meantime, something’s come up. Do you have a minute?”
“I’m just sitting here, listening to CBS broadcast the end of the world.”
Lawrence laughed. “It won’t end. We’ll beat the Germans to U-235, and that’s the key to this war. Their industrial base is far inferior to ours. But the committee will certainly have to change its ways. The procedure is incredibly cumbersome. This business right now, for instance. Intolerable! One interview at a time, for secrecy, tying all of us up for days on end! We need one knowledgeable man in constant liaison with business and industry, and we need him right away.” Lawrence paused, and added, “We’ve just been talking about you.”
“Me? No
“Fred, you’re an engineer, you know business, and your grasp of the theory is adequate. That’s the desired combination, and it’s rare. Unfortunately, no job in the world is more important right now, and you know that.”
“But ye gods, who would I work for? And report to? Not the National Bureau of Standards, for God’s sake!”
“That point is wide open. For secrecy, you might just get a consultant post in the Navy. Captain Kelleher is full of fire to get going, which rather amuses me. Years ago, Fermi came to the Navy with this entire project outlined. They turned him away as a crackpot. The Navy turned away Enrico Fermi! Well Fred? Will you serve?”
After a pause, Kirby said, “Where would I be posted?”
“It would have to be in Washington.” Kirby was silent so long that Lawrence added, “Something wrong with going to Washington?”
“I didn’t say that, but if you want those electromagnets built—”
“That’s a year away, even assuming the approach is approved and the money is appropriated. This must be done now. What do you say?”
