Document list
I often post archival documents on this site. Below is a list of all documents currently available for download, along with the link back to their original post (which contains the citation information).
You are welcome to use any documents posted here without any fanfare; just credit “courtesy of Alex Wellerstein” somewhere and I’m happy. No document listed here should have any copyright restrictions on it.
| Date | Title | Post | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1942-09-07 | Norman Hilberry to Harry T. Wensel (draft deferments) | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1942-12-14 | James B. Conant to Vannevar Bush, "US-British Relations on S-1 Project" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1943-02-15 | Henry D. Smyth to Irving Stewart, [on Princeton wives] | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1944-01 | Teletype from Leslie R. Groves to J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Hazards at the Site." | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1944-11-29 | William A. Shurcliff to Richard C. Tolman, "'Fission' vocabulary" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-05-14 | William L. Laurence's Trinity draft press releases | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-06-11 | "Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems" (Franck Report) | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-06-19 | William A. Consodine to Arthur W. Page (Editing Truman's announcement of Hiroshima) | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-08-06 | Leslie R. Groves and Curtis LeMay teletype transcript on the bombing of Hiroshima | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-08-06 | Transcript of a telephone conversation between Leslie R. Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-08-13 | Telephone transcript, J.E. Hull and L.E. Seeman, on the "third shot" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-09-15 | Lauris Norstad to Leslie Groves, "Atomic Bomb Production" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-09-29 | Transcript, "Press Conference — Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson — Clinton Engineer Works" (with Groves) | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1945-10-30 | William S. Parsons to Norris E. Bradbury, "Declassification of Implosion." | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1946-06 | Chapter 11 (uncensored) from Nuclear Fission and Atomic Energy | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1946-10-04 | Richard C. Tolman to John M. Hancock, "Immediate cessation of bomb manufacture" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1947 | Undated, untitled list of nuclear classification categories | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1950-02-02 | J. Edgar Hoover to Clyde Tolson, et al. [Re: David Lilienthal and Klaus Fuchs] | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1950-02-02 | Excerpt from Minutes of AEC Meetings No. 363 (2 February 1950) and No. 367 (8 February 1950), [Foreign travel of Frank Oppenheimer]. | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1951-02-12 | FBI, "Summary Brief on Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs" (Excerpt) | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1951-03-09 | Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, "On Heterocatalytic Detonations I. Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors (LAMS-1225)." | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1952-02-21 | John Walker to Bill Borden, "Second Laboratory" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1953-01-13 | John Walker, "Memorandum for the File," [H-bomb discussion with Edward Teller] | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1953-10-02 | J. Kenneth Mansfield to Stirling Cole, "Possible steps to be taken in the thermonuclear field" | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1954-09-07 | Frank Cotter to Corbin Allardice, "Second Fuchs," [Ted Hall] | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1956-04-01 | Federal Civil Defense Administration, Mortuary Services in Civil Defense (TM-11-12) | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1958-06-18 | "Operation Teapot, Project 35.5 (February-May 1955): Effects of a Nuclear Explosion on Records and Records Storage Equipment (WT-1191)," | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1963-04-18 | Charles L. Marshall to Max F. Roy, [stockpile data classification] | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1967-03-01 | Summary Report of the Nth Country Experiment | [pdf] | [link] |
| 1978-02-01 | Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), "History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons, July 1945 through September 1977." | [pdf] | [link] |
Note that this is a terribly idiosyncratic group of documents. If you are interested in doing research on nuclear topics with online resources, see my post on “Web-Based Primary Sources for Nuclear History.”
