As hundreds of scientists from around the world were conscripted in the Manhattan Project during the thick of Word War II, the best and brightest were passed along to the top-secret research site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the secrets of the world’s first atom bomb would soon be unlocked.
After the project disbanded in 1946, however, Fuchs switched sides and spent the next two years passing secrets to Soviets that included a method for refining uranium and diagrams for the construction of a hydrogen bomb. At the same time, the Central Intelligence Agency was projecting that the Soviets would be incapable of going nuclear until the mid-1950s. When the USSR conducted their first successful atomic test in 1949, a stunned President Truman initially declared that the explosion must have been an “accident.”
The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, the Red, White and Blue. A symbol of strength and courage. A mark of tolerance and diversity. The indication of democracy and freedom. However you see it and whatever you call it, the American flag is the image behind a nation. Reflecting the history of a people, the flag has a rich history of its own.
George Washington was a general in the Revolutionary War and while stationed in Philadelphia commissioned the making of a flag. The flag was to represent the country Washington and his troops were fighting to bring into reality. On the strength of her reputation as a seamstress, Washington went to visit recently widowed Elizabeth Ross in May of 1776.
Betsy Ross had decided to keep her upholstry business after the untimely death of her husband John. He had died serving the Pennsylvania militia during the war. Ross was happy to assist the General. Washington had been fighting under a flag he called the “Grand Union” which included a smaller version of the British Union Jack in the top left corner. Ross showed Washington that his idea for a six pointed star design would be better as a five pointed star design and the commission was officially hers. The story would not emerge of this encounter until many years later.
It took, according to Ross’ own account, just a few weeks to make the flag and it was ready in time for the celebration of the first Fourth of July. America was celebrating its own birth. The early government of the country made a flag resolution among one of its earliest priorities. On June 14, 1777, 13 white stars in a circle on a blue background next to a field of 13 red and white stripes became the official composition of the United States flag. It was a “new constellation” to represent the cosmic inception of a new nation.
Betsy Ross told the story of flag to only one person before her death and there are no official records to back up the details of the story. But in 1888, Ross’ house became a national treasure and still exists today. As the years passed and the country grew, more stars were added to the flag so that eventually there would be 50 stars to represent the 50 states. The flag on display at the Smithsonian in Washington today is not the Betsy Ross flag. The 15 star flag is Old Glory and was sewn by Mary Pickersgill in 1813.
Mary Pickersgill received the flag commission from Fort Henry in Maryland. She was asked two make two flags one for bad weather and one for good weather. With the help of her daughters and servant, Pickersgill completed the two flags in seven weeks. The good weather flag was 30 feet by 42 feet and hung above the garrison of the fort. The flag flew high throughout the Battle of Baltimore that took place during the War of 1812.
The Battle of Baltimore was one of America’s greatest triumphs against the assuming British. Despite a 25 hour bomb and gun attack by the British naval fleet, the port of Baltimore held strong, forcing the British to retreat. Soldier and poet, Francis Scott Key observed the flag victoriously waving above the fort and became inspired. He went on to write the “Star Spangle Banner,” the words of America’s national anthem in 1814. A copy of that flag still hangs above Fort McHenry today just as American flags fly over every government building and historic site in the country.
| Draping main streets on Memorial Day, Flag Day and Veterans Day, adorning the graves of the nation’s lost fighters and flying high above private homes year round, the American flag endures as the nation endures, remaining a testament to the world’s first democratic nation. |
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For millennia civilizations have kept time to varying degrees of accuracy and for varying degrees of necessity. As far back as 2000 years before the Common Era time has been kept by means of sun measurements and continuous flow measurements in the form of sundials, water clocks, hourglasses, etc. More recently, from after roughly the 15th century, time was kept in more accurate measurement with the introduction of oscillating mechanisms. However, it is only very recently in history that time-keeping instruments have been incorporated into the accessorized wardrobe of the average person.
The history of fashion and costume is presumably as long as the history of human development though we cannot study it as far back as we may like, but the history of the timepiece as a wearable accessory is comparatively short. References to the use of pocket watches can be dated to the 15th century and the wristwatch only to the early 1900’s. The pocket watch would be linked to clothing or worn around the neck with a chain and would typically have had a metal cover to protect the watch face. The desire to keep time, beyond being a novelty to the individual, had a broader social function as Western societies entered the industrial age of factory work and railroad transportation. With the era of manufacturing and train schedules, keeping time became pertinent to laborers as much as to railroad workers and the fashionable, moneyed set.
By World War I the wrist watch was standard supply to Allied forces and answered the need for accurate and accessible time devices during war maneuvers. While the wrist watch had been strictly a feminine accessory preceding the Great War, after the war, as soldiers returned from battle with their keepsake trench wrist watches, it became a legitimate piece of the civilian man’s accoutrements. Since then it has become a fairly typical part of the average person’s costume and the notion of having a time keeping device adorning one’s body has been mediated by variations in wrist watch style and aesthetic detailing.
Submarines have been a part of world culture since the battles of World War II and are a mainstay of Action/Adventure movies and war films. Current submarines powered by nuclear reactors are engineering marvels but it is a relatively new technology. In fact, the first submarine to sink and enemy vessel happened during the American Civil War in 1864.
The sub was propelled by means of a propeller that was hand-cranked by seven men, another man steered the vessel. The Hunley was armed with a spar torpedo which was basically a barrel of gunpowder attached to a 22 foot long wooden spar mounted on the bow. The idea was that the spar would attach itself to the enemy vessel and as the sub backed away from the target a spool of wire would trigger detonation of the explosive.
The Manhattan Project is infamous throughout the world as the spark that ignited irreversible change. It was a change that would end a world conflict and make nations wary of nuclear energy for all time.
On December 2, 1942 the first successful nuclear fission experiment took place at the University of Chicago underneath the college stadium. Enrico Fermian Italian Nobel prize-winning scientist was the first physicist to experiment with the capabilities of neutrons. Once on American soil, Fermi partnered with Niels Bohr a fellow scientist who proffered the idea of a nuclear chain reactionThey worked together for the University of Chicago.
Albert Einsteinbeginning in 1939, wrote at least four letters to President Roosevelt explaining the implications of the experiments in America and in Europe on the properties of uranium and atomic division. As Einstein expounded on the possibilities of atomic energy to give the world new fuels, he simultaneously emphasized the potential harm of the same energy in the wrong hands.
The Depression still dominated FDR’s administration and finding funds for aiding and supervising the Manhattan Project seemed temporarily unnecessary. That is until the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 and America’s entry into the war. Funding for the Manhattan Project fueled experiments at colleges around the United States as scientists raced to stay ahead of the Nazis. So here then was the beginning of the arms race.
