July 16, 1945 - The Trinity Test (right) is successful as the Manhattan Project moves forward. The US quest for nuclear weapons began in 1939 with President Franklin Roosevelt receiving the Einstein-Szilárd Letter. After the US entry into World War II, efforts to create an atom bomb were headed by the secret Manhattan Project. Developing an implosion-type plutonium bomb, Dr. Robert Oppeheimer wished to test the concept before proceeding with the construction of a weapon. Building a test device, known as "The Gadget," Oppenheimer's team at Los Alamos, NM had it suspended atop a 100-ft. tower to simulate it being dropped from an aircraft. At 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, it was successfully detonated with energy equivalent of around 20 kilotons of TNT. The dawn of the nuclear age, the Trinity Test provided the data for building the atomic bombs that would defeat Japan as well as opened the door for the nuclear weapons that would dominate the Cold War.
Photograph Courtesy of the US Department of Energy
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