History Exam
Vick777
hist285_spring2010_week8_meansdestruction.pptxHIST 285 - Technology in Historical Perspective
Department of History & Politics
“The Means of Destruction”
I. Introduction
A. From profit-making capitalism to Pentagon capitalism
- From profit maximizing to contract maximizing
- means of destruction (wanton or controlled?)
B. The military-industrial complex
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech.
- The problems of a single patron system.
Hiroshima after bombing.
Budgetary Black Holes:
Mohole – “earth sciences' answer to the space program.”
Lexington nuclear plane
SDI “Star Wars”
Project Mohole (1958-1966)
Lexington Project (1949-1963)
President Ronald Reagan in 1983
Reagan announced, "I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."
II. WWI, A War of Mass Production
A. Mass production
B. Trench warfare
German 7.7 cm FK 16 cannon
German Barrage 1915
C. Germany’s Four Year Plan (1936-1940)
D. Blitzkrieg
III. Atomic energy
A. WWII “The Physicists’ War
“Physicists’ fable”
1. Universities: Columbia, Berkeley, Chicago
2. Enrico Fermi, 1942
3. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, NM
4. Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard’s 1939 Letter
5. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
A. General Leslie Groves
D. Big Science to Industrial Factory
1. Oak Ridge, TN
A. Uranium-235
B. Electromagnetic separation
1. Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley
a. Cyclotron and Calutron
C. Gaseous diffusion
1. Bell Telephone and Columbia University
D. Thermal diffusion
1. Naval research Laboratory
E. Niels Bohr “”. . . turning the whole country into a factory.”
Niels Bohr 1885-1962
IV. Dropping the Bomb
A. “Little Boy”
B. “Fat Man”
C. The Cold War
1. “The logic of war”
V. Nuclear Submarines and the Arms race
A. Admiral Hyman Rickover
B. Westinghouse, General Electric, Electric Boat
Rickover 1900-1986
C. Atomic Energy Commission
Eisenhower’s speech at the UN 1953
Shippingport Power Station
Its reactor in 1956
