THE “SMYTH REPORT” ON THE ATOM BOMB, SIGNED BY 36 MANHATTAN PROJECT WORKERS WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THE EFFORT—INCLUDING NOBEL LAUREATE ERNEST LAWRENCE—MANY OF WHOM ARE MENTIONED BY NAME IN THE BOOK
SMYTH, Henry DeWolf. Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States Government 1940-1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945. Octavo, original brick-red cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
First trade edition of Smyth’s account of development work under the code name “Manhattan District.” This copy signed on the verso of the front free endpaper and on the rear pastedown by 35 scientists and specialists who worked on the atomic bomb at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley, under the direction of Nobel Laureate (and inventor of the Cyclotron) Ernest O. Lawrence, and signed by Lawrence himself on the half title.
This is the first edition in book form of “the Smyth Report,” as it was known, a “remarkably full and candid account of the development work carried out between 1940 and 1945 by the American-directed but internationally recruited team of physicists, under the code name ‘Manhattan District,’ which culminated in the production of the first atomic bomb” (PMM, 254). Signed by Donald Cooksey, W.M. Brobeck, John Backus, A.C. Hemholtz, Bill Parkins, J.R. Richardson, Ted Fahrner, E.J. Lofgren, N.B. Gardner, C. Prescott, and C.M. Van Alter on the endpaper opposite Lawrence. Their work is mentioned in Chapter XI, Electromagnetic Separation of Uranium Isotopes, and of these 11 who have signed opposite Lawrence, six are mentioned in this chapter by name, with the unnamed students of Lawrence mentioned as “others.” On the rear pastedown, six specialists have signed their names under the heading “Patent Group,” and a further 18 have signed under the heading “Information Group.” Preceded only by preliminary typewritten stencil versions produced in the Adjutant General’s Office by mimeograph, ditto and lithoprint for the Army’s internal distribution. Once the Smyth Report was declassified (six days after the destruction of Hiroshima and three days before the declaration of the end of the war), it was immediately printed by the both the Government Printing Office (staple-bound in paper wrappers, pp. 182) and Princeton University Press, bound in cloth with dust jacket, pp. 264. Historically, the GPO edition has been sold as the first published edition, while the Princeton edition has been sold as the first trade edition. However, “there is some uncertainty as to the exact date of issue. Coleman, page 209, notes that the GPO edition was ‘probably published September 20 plus or minus 5 days” (Laudamus & Krishnamurthy 0426). This Princeton University edition, on the other hand, “was advertised as ‘just published’ in the New York Times Book Review September 16, 1945” (ibid). Thus, it is impossible to determine priority and both editions should rightly be regarded as the “first published.” See Coleman, Princeton University Chronicle, 37:3; PMM 422; Norman 1962.
Book fine. Spine and rear panel slightly darkened, front panel bright, overall dust jacket far nicer than often found, near-fine. Scarce and desirable with signatures of so many scientists and specialists who materially aided the birth of the atomic age.