The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History

In a national survey at the turn of the millennium, both journalists and the public ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb and the end of the Second World War as the top news stories of the twentieth-century. The advent of nuclear weapons, made possible by the Manhattan Project, not only helped bring an end to the Second World War—it ushered in the atomic age and determined how the next war, the Cold War, would be fought.

The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the Manhattan Project. Five main topical areas—Events, People, Places, Processes, and Science—are further divided into sub-sections, each with an introductory page and as many as a dozen or more sub-pages. The site is interactive in the sense that it is designed with the flexibility to meet the needs of a variety of users. Those seeking a brief overview of the Manhattan Project, for example, should start with the introductory pages for the eight sub-sections of the Events Section. Users wanting a more in-depth chronological history should read, in order, the fifty-six Events sub-pages. Numerous internal links within the content of the pages allows the reader to easily move from page to page, wherever his or her interests lead. There are thus multiple ways for the user to approach the site. In addition, the Resources Section provides access to a variety of resource materials, including photos, documents, maps, and published histories.

When completed, The Manhattan Project will total some 120,000 words and over 250 pages and 500 images. The site is being implemented incrementally, with the Events and Resources sections the first part to go online. The remaining sections are scheduled to go online in mid-2013. Click on the above buttons for listings of the projected web pages under each heading.

The Manhattan Project is the result of a collaborative effort headed by the United States Department of Energy’s Office of History and Heritage Resources, with the assistance of graduate fellows in recent American history interested in the intersection of science and national security issues and supported by the Department’s Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration. The Department's Office of Classification hosts the site on its OpenNet website, provided by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, as part of the Office of Classification's partnership with the Office of History and Heritage Resources in making available Manhattan Project resource materials.