Before World War II, America was fighting its way out of the Depression and trying to maintain its policy of isolationism in the face of the escalating conflicts in Europe – and the world was well on its way to the nuclear age.

Scientists from nearly every country in the world were studying the atom, but it was two German scientists who discovered nuclear fission by bombarding uranium with neutrons.

With the discovery of fission, many scientists in Europe and America were afraid Germany would begin to try to develop a bomb that could harness this miracle power. Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt explaining the dire situation and recommending that the government help organize and fund the American scientists who were researching nuclear fission.

“The federal government did not know how to do research,” said Thomas Barton, director of the Ames Laboratory. “They were not set up to do research, and all of the sudden, they had a huge need for a major research project, about as major as had ever been.”

At that time in America, the only places capable of conducting the needed research were universities and private companies, “so they bonded together” and “carried out this massive project under a tremendous shroud of secrecy and pulled it off,” Barton said.

Before the war, there was less than one pound of pure uranium metal in the world, and it was not of the quality needed by the American scientists to conduct their research. A solution was developed in a little town in Central Iowa.

Manhattan comes to Ames

The Ames Project began in February 1942, when Frank Spedding, professor in the chemistry department of what was then Iowa State College, was asked by the war department if he would put together a team to try to develop new technology for the purification of uranium, Barton said.

Spedding, who was recognized as an expert in rare-earth metals, agreed. He began to spend half of each week directing the chemical research at the University of Chicago and the other half of the week directing related research in Ames.

“There was a sleeper car at the Ames depot that was used by Spedding when he was called to Chicago,” said Harry Svec, a retired ISU chemistry professor who was involved with the project as a graduate student. The next train coming through Ames and heading east would be instructed to pick up the car and take it along to Chicago – no questions asked.

Spedding appointed Harley A. Wilhelm, the only other professor in physical chemistry at Iowa State College at the time, as associate director of the Ames Project. Under Spedding and Wilhelm’s supervision, many methods of producing pure uranium were investigated. After the better part of a year had passed, no satisfactory reaction to produce pure uranium metal had been found. Then, while Spedding was in Chicago, the decision was made to experiment with the compound uranium tetraflouride.

“Spedding brought back one small brick, sawed it in half, . they ground it into a fine powder and mixed it with granular calcium, put it in a pipe that had an insulating ceramic wall, put a piece of magnesium ribbon into it – and it didn’t work,” Svec said.

He said this pipe wasn’t a very fancy apparatus. It was an iron pipe with the end welded shut, and it had a threaded cap on the other end.

“The most sophisticated tool you needed was a pipe wrench to close the cap,” Svec said.

Pure uranium not a pipe dream

These reduction bombs were the containers in which the reaction which created the uranium took place.

Wayne Keller, working under Spedding and Wilhelm, had an undergraduate student repeat the experiment. This time, the whole pipe was placed in a furnace, a small oven-like device used to heat objects. When the temperature of the bomb reached “approximately 1,500 degrees Celsius, the darn reaction went off,” Svec said.

After the pipe, referred to as a bomb because of its potential to explode, had cooled to room temperature, the cap was removed, and a small bead of pure uranium was nestled at the bottom.

“The first bomb reduction of uranium tetraflouride had just been accomplished at Iowa State College on August 3, 1942,” Svec said. “With that result, every other effort to make uranium by the other methods here at Ames stopped.”

This new process of creating pure uranium metal cut the cost of the previous method by 95 percent, and the uranium was of a superior quality. This process was refined, and new bombs were designed, all in an effort to increase the yield of the reaction. The new bombs were four inches in diameter, about a foot and a half long, welded shut on one end and screwed shut with a cap on the other end, Svec said.

The interior of a bomb after the reduction is complete.

Since the reaction was extremely exothermic, giving off large amounts of heat, a common spark plug placed inside the bomb was able to initiate the reaction. Several bomb reduction experiments were carried out in September 1942, until there were enough pure uranium biscuits, as they were called, to cast a 2-inch by 5-inch, 11-pound ingot – a mass of metal convenient for storage or transportation.

Spedding already was in Chicago when the 11-pound ingot was finally ready to travel. Wilhelm hopped the night train to Chicago and presented the ingot to Spedding. Spedding and Wilhelm took the ingot to Arthur Compton, who was the head of the Metallurgical Project at the University of Chicago. Compton had never seen a single piece of uranium that big before, and Spedding and Wilhelm had to have the ingot cut in half to prove it wasn’t hollow.

Ames Lab is born

Soon after they presented the ingot to Compton, Iowa State College signed a contract with the former federal Office of Scientific Research and Development to produce 100 pounds of pure uranium a day.

“Then everyone wanted uranium metal on the Manhattan Project, so we went into the business of making it,” Svec said.

At this time, more space was needed to expand the uranium-making process into a pilot plant. A small, one-story wooden building just south of where Hamilton Hall now stands was chosen to house this new plant. The building had many uses before the Ames Project moved into it.

“The building had been used as a women’s gymnasium, they practiced archery there, it had been used as a storage building and its most recent use before we moved into it was a popcorn laboratory,” Svec said.

The dirt floor was replaced with a concrete one, and the house began to expand. This building was originally named Physical Chemistry Annex, but it came to be known as Little Ankeny, in reference to the munitions plant located in nearby Ankeny.

Little Ankeny “got to be part of the folklore in Ames,” Svec said. “About once or twice a week, there would be a big fire inside the building.”

Since security was so tight, “the Ames fire department came up and parked in front, and they weren’t allowed inside, because we did all of our own fire fighting.”

While Little Ankeny was under construction, uranium production was going full tilt in the chemistry building where the process was first developed. On Dec. 2, 1942, two tons of pure uranium metal was shipped to the University of Chicago to be used in the world’s first controlled nuclear reaction. Enrico Fermi, the physicist who designed the reactor, had the uranium from Iowa State College placed in the center of the reactor because of its superior purity. Four more tons of pure uranium, 40 tons of uranium oxide and 385 tons of graphite were placed around the pure uranium core by undergraduate physics students from the University of Chicago. The role of the graphite blocks was to slow neutrons in the reactor, helping to increase the number of atoms split and prolonging the chain reaction.

Spedding was invited to witness this ultra-secret and revolutionary event. After it was proven a controlled nuclear reaction was possible, a new, even larger reactor was constructed at the Clinton Engineer Works in Tennessee. More than 90 percent of the uranium used in the construction of this reactor came from Iowa State College. This new reactor was called the X-10 and was designed to convert the uranium from Iowa State into weapons-grade plutonium for use in the first atomic bombs.

Uranium demand heats up

In 1943, the large demand for pure uranium metal, as well as research on uranium and other rare-earth metals, prompted Spedding to resign as director of the chemistry division at the University of Chicago to focus on the many activities in Ames. Also in 1943, production of uranium at Little Ankeny was increased and peaked at about 971 pounds per day in late January. Uranium production peaked at 130,000 pounds per month by the middle of 1943.

After large-scale production of uranium began in late 1943, the Ames Project scaled back uranium production to concentrate more on recovering pure uranium from scrap metal in a new building. Chemistry Annex 2 was built especially for the recovery process and was located just northeast of Little Ankeny. The building was burned down in 1972.

After the bomb

After the war, uranium production was completely taken over by commercial and industrial companies, and Iowa State College’s role in the Manhattan Project was over. Spedding pushed for a federally funded research institute at Iowa State College, and he got his wish when the Ames Laboratory was founded in 1947.

“We knew it was special, we knew it was very special,” Svec said. “Iowa State College was producing not only hogs in tonnage quantities, but also pure uranium metal for the Manhattan Project.”