Talk:Timeline of the Manhattan Project

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_ _ Australia was also part of the project as Mark Oliphant was an australian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jm1234567890 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Start of the timeline

_ _ I'm inclined to push the start of the timeline back at least a few years earlier (with much less frequent milestones), and maybe far enuf to include discovery of radioactivity.
_ _ In any case, IMO the years should be subsections of at least 3 higher-order headings, e.g.

• Context (or "Origins" or "Pre-conditions")
• WWII and the Bomb (probably beginning with invasion of China or repudiation of Versailles, & ending with VJ Day)
• Post-war

_ _ Feedback?
--Jerzy•t 19:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Well, it's suppose to be primarily the history of the U.S. program, not just nuclear weapons in general, so I think starting it with the Einstein/Szilard letter makes the most sense. I initially wrote it up to serve as a reference for editing the Manhattan Project article and other such purposes, because it is hard to keep all of these things straight, and only entered in the WWII-related info that seems immediately relevant (i.e. the entrance of the US into the war). So.. I'm inclined to say that there shouldn't be too much context here, just because it is a list which is meant to be optimized towards the Manhattan Project (rather than a Timeline of World War II or something like that). But I'm open to talk about it.
  --Fastfission 00:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I think i need to emphasize the sparseness of the additions i'm talking abt, and i agree that the letter and the AEC are the points where 4 to 10 milestones per year should start and end. In fact, i think they are very close to where 1 (sub-)section per year should start and end, and that there is no need, outside the year-per-section portion, for more than a year or even a decade per bullet point. The logic of that is that the added milestonse are not a substitute for a full-scale WWII or nukes timeline -- nor would those other timelines substitute well for the additions, bcz they have too much info, too many milestones. Shall i try suggesting at least a few milestones? Milestones maybe not so much for context as for perspective?
--Jerzy•t 00:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

You're of course welcome to add things! If there is anything that seems unnecessary we can talk about it afterwards. --Fastfission 16:07, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, my unpolished thots on this & my inexperience w/ timelines incline me more to brainstorming here first. E.g.:

Physics

• late 17th century Isaac Newton initiates mathematical physics
• late 19th century - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity (& Marie Curie?)
• 1900s - Ernest Rutherford discovers the nucleus & achieves nuclear transmutation (check order of these)
• 1905 - Einstein formulates mass-energy equivalence
• 1930s - Lise Meitner (& Otto Hahn) - nuclear fission

Politics

• late 19th century - Otto von Bismark - unification of Germany
• late 19th century - Commodore Perry (1854) & Meiji period in Japan
• 1904/05 - Russo-Japanese War
• 1910s - WWI
• early 1930s - Second Sino-Japanese War
• 1935 - Repudiation of Treaty of Versailles
• 1938 - Munich, occupation of Czechoslovakia, & embargoing of Czech uranium

2nd & 3rd Einstein letters

I think it's fine to end with the conversion to AEC, especially since that corresponded to a mission that was dramatically different (despite being intimately related). But there should be a lk not just to AEC, but to timeline(s) of Cold War and post-Soviet nuclear development.

I'm not sure this needs to be the "prelude" within Manh. Proj.; could be a Timeline of the Emergence of the Nuclear Age.

--Jerzy•t 07:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

According to Stephane Groueff's book Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb, Groves didn't purchase the site until the 24th, when he visited the site the day after he was named a general and had a meeting with Stimson and Marshall. JKBrooks85 02:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Why does it say "he [Einstein] later regretted signing the letter"? Some more information about why he regretted it would be most helpful. Was it because signing the letter led to the creation of such a horrible bomb? What's the story here??Jedi Shadow 02:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I think/feel that there should be an entry in 1938 for the discovery of fission of uranium. Were not for that event then no one would bother starting a weapons research program. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.224.116 (talk) 05:23, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

bohemian grove meeting?

In the article for Bohemian grove It says:

The Grove is particularly famous for a Manhattan Project planning meeting that took place there in September 1942, which subsequently led to the atomic bomb. Those attending this meeting, apart from Ernest Lawrence and military officials, included the president of Harvard and representatives of Standard Oil and General Electric. Grove members take particular pride in this event and often relate the story to new attendees.

Is this relevant to the list? Hulahulahulahula (talk) 17:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The project

Edward teller was part of the project —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.99.108.10 (talk) 14:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

TCO comments on overall structure

I saw the MP FA, so I know the history is well researched (kudos) and I can see the comments here are doing a great job of fixing typos and the like. I'm concerned that if you really step back and look at the article though, it is pretty unfriendly to our reader. It's this huge list with no color formatting or table or the like to tell different types of events or the like. How would Groves feel about getting this in a report?

First of all where's the timeline! I see a chronology, a list of dates, but not something someone would call a timeline. Here, look at a Google image search for "timeline".

Second, one of the things that a timeline would really be good for is telling when different diffusion technologies came on line or the like, but that info is just not accessible to the reader in present article's format. Look at this simple timeline of the Manhattan Project for something that helps me understand what happened when.

So recommendations:

Baby step option: Give me a simple L-R graphical timeline immediately below your lead. Remember how nice the centered map of locations is in the FA? Let's emulate that by analogy, but now let's have a time axis. Either do it as part of the lead like the map in this wolf list, or as the first double equals section, called "Overview". Then rename the listy list "Detailed chronology". This, along with a little more engaging lead, will at least give enough sugar so that casual readers will be interested in the meat of the article...or so that if they blow off reading the dates list, they at least feel that they sort of engaged with it.

Nuclear option: Rewrite the whole thing (entire article) into a graphical or tabular format. You can actually USE the medium here to your advantage by having a scroll-shaped (get it) diagram that is screen wide and goes down several "page downs". I'm thinking of something like the Heinlein future history diagram (and he did that with 30s technology at a table, nothing fancy). But you could have sections for "organizational", "separation", "bomb design and testing", "external" (the war events, elections). It would basically be that simple MP diagram above but turned on its side...and then you put all the content into a structure, not a laundry list...so that the reader can really learn from it quickly. You don't have to get super fancy graphically, like Tufte with the army coming in and out of Russia (but you could...for example showing volumes of Pu and U production). Just Cartesian like a table down the page with sections.

Lead friendliness: Please take a fresh look at the lead and think about how to make it more engaging and relevant to the timeline as opposed to just the project. It's a good place to give us background, but try to emphasize phases of the project or (if you end up doing a sort of diagram, the different themes/categories (separation, design, etc.). There's actually some of that in there, but then there is low value stuff like the District versus Project caveat.

Useless infobox: Get rid of the low value-add infobox.

TCO (talk) 01:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

P.s. You don't have to do the graphics or table work yourself. There are people on Wiki who will do that part of it, if you engage and collaborate with them. They can handle the technical stuff and you the content. (TCO)

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