A photo gallery posted on The Atlantic magazine website is generating interest in historical Oak Ridge photos.
The pictures, most of them by photographer Ed Westcott, capture life in Oak Ridge and its federal plants between 1942 and 1966.
The gallery features 29 pictures. Subjects include original and temporary Oak Ridge homes, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer—”the father of the atomic bomb”—calutron operators and a calutron “racetrack” at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the X-10 graphite reactor, the main control room at the K-25 uranium enrichment plant, a picture of Sen. John F. Kennedy touring Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and a celebration in Jackson Square at the end of World War II.
Oak Ridge was built during World War II to help make the world’s first atomic weapons as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.
Many of the pictures will likely be familiar to longtime Oak Ridgers, but there could be some unfamiliar ones as well.
jack campbell says
Great pics ! Thanks.
John Huotari says
You’re welcome, and thanks to The Atlantic for posting them. There were some pictures in here that I haven’t seen before.