Louis slot in and harry daghlians 1945 chevy

Harry daghlian and louis slotin

Slotin assembled the core of the Gadget at Trinity—if you have seen photos from the Trinity Test, you have probably seen him in them. On May 21st, Louis Slotin was killed in a nuclear criticality accident. Slotin worked on a team involved with experiments meant to study nuclear materials at the edge of a nuclear chain reaction, without fully bringing the fissile materials to criticality.

He writes:. Cleary…According to Cleary, Slotin simply used a screwdriver to pry apart the hemispheres [of beryllium] to remove the spacers around the interface. As Slotin was removing a spacer the screwdriver slipped, the bottom hemisphere tilted in its cradle, and all the spacers fell out. The two hemispheres crashed together.

Louis slotin "that does it"

The men then hurried to the gate and drove off to the infirmary in the escape cars. Slotin, who had been hunched over the assembly, received the highest dosage, but Cleary and Young also received heavy doses of hard radiation. The Slotin accident was the second fatal criticality accident. Harry K. Daghlian Jr. Phil Morrison wrote an official letter reporting on the Slotin accident.

In the archives we have the copy of the letter sent to Bernie Feld. Below are scans of the original letter; a transcript is below the scans. Gift of Peter Deutsch.