Have you seen these Manhattan Project artifacts?

Los Alamos National Laboratory is looking for a few objects that may be lying around in family heirloom collections. 

Manhattan Project National Historical Park is on the hunt for specific Manhattan Project-era artifacts that community members may have in their possession. These items will allow the park team and Bradbury Science Museum to build out specific exhibits so visitors can better understand the secret work that went into creating the atomic bomb here in Los Alamos.

These organizations depend on the greater Los Alamos community to source materials for exhibits at the park, the Bradbury, the National Security Research Center (NSRC), and in community venues such as the White Rock Visitor Center. Collections specialist Wendy Strohmeyer has found many pieces at local estate sales and on Craigslist, but her favorite acquisitions are ones initiated by the owners of the artifacts. 

“I love it when people find things, don’t want to keep them, and then contact us,” Strohmeyer says. “We got Oppenheimer’s copy of The Baghavad Gita that way.”

“If somebody donates an artifact to us, especially something that’s authentic to the Lab, we make sure to credit them by name on the exhibit so they’re part of it,” Strohmeyer says. If someone wants to retain ownership of an artifact, simply loaning it to the museum is an option, too. 

Replicas are welcome. After the television drama series Manhattan finished filming in Santa Fe in 2015, the show’s prop department donated several of its creations to the Bradbury collection. But plenty of authentic items are still floating around because the Lab has sold many to the public as salvage over the years.

The Laboratory Site Cleanup Program keeps an eye out for these objects, too, says program leader Andrea Pistone. During a 2022 legacy equipment cleanup on Lab property, Pistone’s team identified an abandoned Manhattan Project-era safe and arranged for its move to the park’s artifact collection. 

“The safe was in a corner in one of the rooms, and we pulled the string as it looked historic,” Pistone says. “Turns out it was!”

Read about the following items and consider if you know where we might find any of them.

A Marchant calculator made in the 1940s (model 10D)

During the Manhattan Project, the word “computer” referred to women like Naomi Livesay, who worked long hours punching numbers on these calculators in the computation lab. These women, also known as “the calculators,” performed the complex mathematics needed to design the bomb. Their contributions to the project—not to mention mathematics and computing — are still not widely familiar. The few Marchant calculators currently owned by the Bradbury all date back to the 1950s, which have a more modern look and different functions than the models used by the women computers of the Manhattan Project. An exact match of the 10D model would be mostly black, with red, yellow, and green buttons. 

Strohmeyer and her colleagues at the park and the museum hope to eventually use this artifact for an exhibit about the women of the Manhattan Project.

“As far as I know, there has never been a large-scale exhibit about the women that worked on the Manhattan Project, but we’ve talked about putting one together,” Strohmeyer says. “Something like this to show what they were working on would help.”

A bistro stool like Louis Slotin’s

“It’s very difficult to find this style of chair today,” Strohmeyer says. The park plans to re-create the scene of the famous Slotin criticality accident in what is now known as the Slotin Building, and obtaining at least one similar stool will contribute to exhibit’s authenticity. 

Kodak Cine Model E camera marked as property of the Lab

Many of these cameras were set up at the Trinity Test, but none survived to join the Bradbury collection. Although Strohmeyer was able to purchase a replica on eBay, she’s still looking for one that officially belonged to the Manhattan Project—which would likely be affixed with a red property plate indicating as much.  

The full story of the cameras at the Trinity Test is a particular favorite of Strohmeyer’s. These cameras were supposed to capture the test in color, and of approximately 20 that were set up, every single one failed. This is why only a single photo of the Trinity Test was captured in color — by physicist Jack Aeby with his own personal camera. It’s not that Aeby was the only person who thought to shoot a color photograph.

“They really did mean to capture it as best they could in every format, and the cameras just weren’t able to do it,” Strohmeyer says. “I like that story and would like a way to visually interpret it.”

The Bradbury has three of these in its collections — all replicas — but MAPR needs a total of four to complete its restoration of Battleship Bunker.

And a few more things…

Strohmeyer shared the following images of general instruments that appear in historic Laboratory photographs. If people find artifacts that seem similar, she says, she’d love the chance to look them over. 

If you own any of the specific items mentioned in this story and would like to share them with Manhattan Project National Historical Park, please email Wendy Strohmeyer at mapr-artifacts@lanl.gov.