American History: Developing the First Atomic Bombs
13 July 2011
Members of the experimental staff at North American Aviation, Inc. observing wind tunnel tests on a model of a B-25 plane in 1942
STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember
(MUSIC)
World War Two ended with an action that was never taken before in the history of warfare, and has never been taken since. It required the efforts of a team of scientists. Working in secrecy, they designed and built the first atomic bombs. President Harry S. Truman made the decision to use these weapons against Japan in August of nineteen forty-five.
PRESIDENT TRUMAN: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. We shall continue to use it until we destroy Japan’s power to make war."
STEVE EMBER: America's use of atomic weapons brought years of conflict in Europe and the Pacific to an end. But it also marked the beginning of the nuclear age. And it represented, in a dramatic way, the growing importance of science and technology in modern times.
The second atomic bomb ever used in warfare explodes over the Japanese town of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945
Interest in science goes back to the earliest days of the nation. President Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were famous not only as political leaders but also as inventors and scientists. President Abraham Lincoln and Congress established the National Academy of Sciences during the Civil War in the eighteen sixties. And in the early nineteen hundreds, the nation created scientific offices to study and improve agriculture, public health, even air travel.
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