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associated scientists thenselves knew up to the close of 1942.
much of the subsequent findings as well.
It in fact tells
In any caso, from the end of 192 it
was only two and onc-half years before we had the bonb,
Tho Smyth Report reveals among other things that five distinct and separate
processes for producing fissicnable materials were pursued, and that all were
successful,
These involved four processes for the separation of the U-235
isotope from the nore common forms of uranium and one basic process for the production of plutonium.
One of the isotope separation processes, the so-called
"Ncontrifuge process," was nevcr pushed beyond the pilct plant stage, but it was
successful as far as it was pursucd.
It was droppcd when the gaseous diffusion
and clectromagnétic methods of isotope separation promised assured success 49
The thermal diffusion process was restricted to a small plant.
But any of these
| processes would have sufficeoc to produce the fissionable naborials for the bomb.
Each of these processes presented probloms for which generally multiple rather
than singic solutions were discovered.
Each of them, furthermore, is described
in the report in fairly revealing though general terms.
probably reveals enough
Finally, the report
to indicatc to the careful reader which of the processes
presents the fewest problems and offers the nost profitable yicld.
Another
nation wishing to produce the bomb cafimenfine its efforts to that one proccss
fe
eB
fs
o
t.
about the bomb itself tc give one a good
idca of its basic character.
Superficially at lcast, the problem of bomb design
seems a bottleneck, since the same bomb is required to handic the matcrials produced by any of the five processes mentioned above,
But that is like saying that
waile gascline can be produced in several diffcroant ways, only one kind of engine
can utilize it effectively.
The bomb is gadgetry, and it is a commonplace in the
history of technology that mechanical devices of radically different cesign have
been perfected to achieve a comion end.
The machine gun has several variants
See Smyth Report, chaps. vii-xi, also paragraph 5.21.