ABSTRACT
On September 15, 1945, exactly one month after the surrender of Japan, and less than two weeks after the ceremony on the USS Missouri ended the Second World War, Major General Lauris Norstad of the Army Air Force sent a memorandum to Manhattan Project chief General Leslie Groves. Thomas Hughes presents the Manhattan Project both as the model for later technological system-building developments and as a continuation of the growth of large production systems since the late nineteenth century. On the Manhattan Project, the industrial-capitalist control of labor process was achieved by military-security regime of compartmentalization. According to Thomas Hughes, the Manhattan Project set a precedent for future technological system building in the extensive employment and influence of highly trained physicists and chemists, who interacted creatively with industrially experienced engineers, metallurgists, and skilled machinists. Even though promises of energy too cheap to meter failed to materialize, the prestige of science was crucially important in the ideological framework of the period.
