The S-50 Project was the Manhattan Project's effort to produce enriched uranium by liquid thermal diffusion during World War II. The process was developed by Philip H. Abelson and other scientists at the United States Naval Research Laboratory, and was one of three technologies for uranium enrichment pursued by the Manhattan Project. Pilot plants were built at the Anacostia Naval Air Station and the Philadelphia Navy Yard. A facility at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was the only production-scale liquid thermal diffusion plant ever built. It could not enrich uranium sufficiently for use in an atomic bomb, but it could begin the process of enrichment that was completed by the Y-12 calutrons and the K-25 gaseous diffusion plants. It sped up the production of enriched uranium for the Little Boy bomb used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This plant ceased production in September 1945, but was reopened in May 1946, and used by the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft project of the US Army Air Forces before being demolished in the late 1940s.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-50_(Manhattan_Project)
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
565:
Justinian the Great deposed Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, after the latter refused the Byzantine Emperor's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of Monophysites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutychius_of_Constantinople
1689:
The Convention Parliament convened to justify the overthrow of James II, the last Roman Catholic King of England, who had vacated the throne when he fled to France in 1688. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England
1905:
Russian Revolution: Peaceful demonstrators, led by Father Gapon, a Russian Orthodox priest, were massacred outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1905)
1924:
Ramsay MacDonald took office as the first British Prime Minister from the Labour Party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsay_MacDonald
1970:
The Boeing 747, the world's first widebody commercial airliner, entered service for Pam Am on the New York–London route. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
tickety-boo: (chiefly Britain, informal) Correct, satisfactory. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tickety-boo
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good. --Francis Bacon https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon