Beginnings
Original calls for a war memorial came from University of Michigan students in 1947. Fred Smith, a local alumnus, suggested a project looking into the peaceful uses of nuclear power. A full page poster was printed in the Michigan Daily suggesting that the Phoenix Project will show that Americans can work to benefit the world. The idea stuck, and Ralph Sawyer, the Dean of the Rackham Graduate School at UM, began planning.
In February 1955, the Atomic Energy Commission licensed the FNR. In the summer of 1955, construction began. The reactor was dedicated on November 16, 1956. On September 18, 1957, the final mechanical manipulations and calculations were taking place. With Ralph Sawyer, Henry Gomberg, and Ardath Emmons standing by, the reactor achieved first criticality around 4 in the morning on September 19, 1957. On August 11, 1958, the FNR power reached its rated level of 1 megawatt.
Read more about this topic: Ford Nuclear Reactor
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“[Many artists], even the greatest ones, are not sure of their own existence. So they search for proof, they judge, they condemn. It strengthens them, it is the beginnings of existence. They are alone!”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)