December 1938
Two German scientists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, demonstrate nuclear fission.August 1939
Albert Einstein sends a letter to President Roosevelt informing him of German atomic research and the potential for a bomb. This letter prompts Roosevelt to form a special committee to investigate the military implications of atomic research.September 1942
Courtesy Outlawlabs
The Manhattan Project is formed to secretly build the atomic bomb before the Germans.
December 1942
Department of Energy
Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard demonstrated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a lab under the squash court at the University of Chicago.
July 1945
The United States explodes the first atomic device at a site near Alamagordo, New Mexico - the invention of the atomic bomb.August 1945
The United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.December 1951
The first usable electricity from nuclear fission is produced at the National Reactor Station, later called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.1952
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Edward Teller and team build the hydrogen bomb.
January 1954
U.S. Navy
The first nuclear submarine U.S.S. Nautilus is launched. Nuclear power enables submarines to become true "submersibles" - able to operate underwater for an indefinite period of time. The development of the Naval nuclear propulsion plant was the work of a team Navy, government and contractor engineers led by Captain Hyman G. Rickover.
