A stag field Chicago, our scientists put enough pure uranium together to get a chain reaction going.

A chain reaction meant that an atomic explosion was a distinct possibility. Is that right, Bill?

That's right, Bob. Okay, let's get out with a bomb.

In the heart of the Tennessee Valley Authority, between the Smokies and the Cumberland Mountains is Oak Ridge.

The local inhabitants working the war on our land using methods of the past were suddenly projected into the 21st century.

My job was security. They called us the creeps.

That's Colonel Bill Consodyne.

At Oak Ridge, we had to build magnets, each one about half the size of a city block.

We needed copper, almost unlimited copper, was which to wind these magnets.

And with the war on, there just wasn't that much copper in the world.

Silver, as you know, is just as good or even better a conductor of electricity as copper.

So we call the Mint in Washington and borrowed 400 million dollars worth of silver to wind the magnets with. We move the silver by

flat car and to this day those magnets at Oak Ridge are still wound with silver. We

used to call it the sub-treasurer. It was the best use any silver was ever put to.

Oh, that's a great story, Bill. But what exactly were they doing at Oakbridge?

Was that the atom bomb factory?

No, Bob.

The actual factory was at Los Alamos.

Oak Ridge was the source of pure uranium.

General Motors, for example, makes cars in Detroit,

where they gather steel from Pittsburgh.

Oak Ridge had the enormous task of taking the raw uranium and turning it into usable 235 and then shipping it to the factory at Los Alamos to be fabricated into bombs.

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