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The Code Name Trinity
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The
origin
of the code name
Trinity for the test site is also interesting, but the true source is
unknown.
One popular account attributes the name to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the
scientific
head of the Manhattan Project. According to this version, the well read
Oppenheimer based the name Trinity on the fourteenth Holy Sonnet by
John
Donne, a 16th century English poet and sermon writer. The sonnet
started,
"Batter my heart, three-personed God." Another version of the
name's origin comes from University of New Mexico historian Ferenc M.
Szasz.
In his 1984 book, The Day the Sun Rose Twice, Szasz quotes Robert W.
Henderson
head of the Engineering Group in the Explosives Division of the
Manhattan
Project. Henderson told Szasz that the name Trinity came from
Major
W. A. (Lex) Stevens.
According to Henderson, he and Stevens were
at the test site discussing the best way to haul Jumbo
the
thirty miles from the closest railway siding to the test site. "A
devout Roman Catholic, Stevens observed that the railroad siding was
called
'Pope's Siding.' He [then] remarked that the Pope had special
access
to the Trinity, and that the scientists would need all the help they
could
get to move the 214 ton Jumbo to its proper
spot."
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 RELATED LINKS |
 Learn
About Trinity - The First Atomic Test
The
First Atomic Test
Jumbo
The
National Atomic Museum
Schmidt-McDonald
Ranch House
The
Trinity Test
The
Awesome Blast
Notes &
Bibliography
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| RECOMMENDED
LITERATURE |
|
The
Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear
Explosion,
July 16, 1945
by
Ferenc Morton Szasz - First published in 1984, this
prize-winning history of the Manhattan Project is now available in
paperback
for the first time, fifty years after the explosion of the first atomic
bomb.
"This tightly focused, lucidly
written and thoroughly researched book... describes the events,
personalities
and scientific processes that led to the detonation of the first atomic
bomb in an isolated stretch of New Mexican desert.... Mr. Szasz
provides
fascinating details.... The Day the Sun Rose Twice is concise and
cogent,
a valuable introduction to how our nuclear dilemma began." —New York
Times
Book Review
"May be the definitive account
of the days and hours leading up to the first nuclear explosion in
history
and the legacy it left. He vividly reconstructs the story: the
industrious
atmosphere of the scientists and technicians; the grave considerations
of those making key decisions; the sense of wonder, and twinges of
conscience,
at what had been achieved." —Los Angeles Times
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SPONSORED LINKS
