During WWII, as the Manhattan Project to build nuclear weapons got underway, Los Alamos, New Mexico, suddenly no longer existed. If you knew someone there, you had to write to P.O. Box 1663. It was only in 1945 that the place was restored to official maps and records.
Eight years later, Robert Krohn, then in charge of the weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), decided it was time to let people know the significance of the work done there. In 1954, a former ice house at Ashley Pond, with a vault door for security purposes, opened to the public as the Bradbury Science Museum, with unclassified exhibits and various WWII documentation.
Moving to its present downtown location in 1993, the museum is named after Norris Bradbury, LANL director from 1945 to 1970, and has 60 interactive exhibits, including a Mark 12A warhead, models of the Vela, Alexia, and Forte verification and communication satellites, an air-launched cruise missile, and a detailed history of computing to gratify any geek worthy of the name.
Today, 80,000 people per year visit to learn more about the history of nearby LANL, its defense and security remit, ongoing engineering, technology and scientific exploration and, of course, the Manhattan Project. PCMag did a tour with Bradbury Museum Director Linda Deck and picked out our top 10 sights to see, including a preview of the new app.
Deck's background is in paleontology, specializing in microfossils, and she has headed up the Bradbury Museum for nine years, after spending 20 years at the Smithsonian. What drew her to the Bradbury was its day-to-day relationship with the working scientists at LANL.
"I knew there would be great stories to tell," Deck told PCMag, "Not just about our history, from the Manhattan Project onwards, but from today, with the amazing work being done now in technology, science and theoretical research at the Lab."
Click through the slideshow for some of the highlights; if you're in the area, the museum is at 1350 Central Ave in Los Alamos.
(For more, check out 10 Cool Things to See at NASA's Johnson Space Center.)
Project Y
"We keep our eyes and ears open and, as items are declassified, we work with our historians to acquire and incorporate them into the Museum," said Deck.
Marchant Calculator
Trinity Test
MANIAC Data Register Unit
Roadrunner Tri-blade
Fat Man Bomb
"Most visitors come with a certain amount of knowledge about the Manhattan Project but they are intrigued and have a real thirst to learn more," Deck pointed out. "And we have artifacts and provide context that no other place has, very near the site of the research itself."
The Rack
DARHT
Cruise Missile
App
"Our goal, with the app, which was developed here at the Lab by our team that programs virtual reality environments, is to communicate what it was like, as a scientist, to be asked to join the team," Deck said. "At the start of the app you'll open a virtual telegram, telling you to take a train to Lamy, New Mexico. There you'll meet Los Alamos's gatekeeper Dorothy McKibbin at 109 East Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then you'll get on the bus, be driven up a dirt road, to the top of the mesa to where we are now. As you go through the app, wartime technical areas will 'unlock' (many are still behind the fence today in high-security buildings and not open to the public). It will tell the story of what went on here, in a truly immersive way. If you're using the app during your real life visit to Los Alamos, we've built in augmented-reality sections. You can walk around downtown, point your mobile at markers on significant sites and see historic photos and other audio/visual materials which bring the story to life."