[La lamy]

I want to see it, but will wait for it to be free online. No desire to go to a cinema.

[mntlblok]

Originally Posted by manaboutown

I am heading over to NM and plan to see it there. One of my aunts was an Army nurse stationed in Los Alamos as the school nurse during the Manhattan Project. She never said much about it except a famous physicist whose name I wont mention here had a son who was still wetting his pants at school at the age of ten.

From 1972 through the mid 1980s I was a staff member at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), during my time there renamed Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). A few of the old timers were still around when I started working there and at a wine tasting I heard quite a story from one of them about the test of "the gadget" in the desert near Alamogordo (Trinity Site) which is open to the public twice a year. At one time one could buy a paperweight globe containing a small piece of fused sand from the the test shot. Maybe still can. I don't know. Many if not most people from the townsite went up Sawyer's Hill (now the ski slope) very early, while it was still dark, the morning of the test. The shot did not go off at the time planned. The crowd gloomily waited for a while then started to disperse to go home. All of a sudden the sky lit up as bright as noontime and they all started to cheer as the gadget had functioned!

Trinity Site - White Sands National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

When I lived in Los Alamos Clement and Benner was the only store in town at which one could buy clothing. They sold a T-shirt with a rendition of the Trinity blast on its front. I still have mine somewhere.

The government built housing as Los Alamos had been a boy's boarding school comprising a few log homes (known as Bathtub Row during the Manhattan Project) and Fuller Lodge (I stayed there a couple nights in 1963 while working part time at Kirkland AFB's Weapons Laboratory) while in college. Our group went up to Los Alamos to conduct an experiment. Anyway, the project was so secret the plans for the apartments were designated with "LA" which the architects interpreted as Los Angeles. Ergo, they were hardly insulated; Los Alamos is at over 7,000 feet above sea level and believe me it gets very cold there. OK, I have rambled on enough.

Should you ever lack for folks to sit and listen to your stories, I will always make myself available. :-)

[manaboutown]

Originally Posted by mntlblok

Should you ever lack for folks to sit and listen to your stories, I will always make myself available. :-)

Thank you. I had not thought about Los Alamos for years but the movie brought it to mind. When I was in high school in 1959 I did a book report on a biography about Oppenheimer. I do not remember the book’s title but it had been published at that time.

When I was hired at LASL the higher-ups held a welcoming cocktail party for new staff members. It was held at the lab’s museum which had an inner patio containing surplus casings for Little Boy and Fat Man bombs. I remember leaning up against Fat Man while nursing a martini.

There are now several museums in Los Alamos.

Probably the most ironic event in my life concerning the lab is in the early 1990s I took a job in Orange County, CA, frequented a Japanese restaurant for lunch and got to know my regular waitress. Turned out she was born in Hiroshima! I gently asked how her parents had survived the bomb. She told me her mother’s family lived outside town in a suburb. Her father was a street car conductor who lived downtown. He was sick that day with the flu but due to the wartime labor shortage was forced to work. His street car with him on it was at the end of its run in a distant suburb when the bomb exploded.

[Mrfriendly]

Originally Posted by Mrfriendly

Have seats for Sunday showing at IMAX in Atlantic City. To see big ya gotta go big.

Wow and I had no idea of the details described in the movie. It's true the weapon brought home a lot of our boys from the war then but I can't help feeling I wish it was never invented. Hmmm

[GpaVader]

We saw it at the Old Mill Playhouse this weekend. Great movie, make sure your bladder is empty. For $8, I really liked it. Not sure it's a movie that needs to be seen on IMax, FWIW.... It helps to read up on who all the players were before going to the movie....