From the National Archives in Chicago, I plucked a minor, minor memo from Walter Zinn to managers at his new Argonne laboratory. In a sense the memo says little but asides such as this one are useful because they signal the attitudes then prevalent. It comforts me that Zinn, such a relentless pursuer of nuclear energy, was also passionate about day-to-day safety.
A recent accident in our Laboratory emphasizes once more the necessity for everyone’s obeying a longstanding rule in this Laboratory. This rule is and has been that persons working with radioactive or otherwise toxic materials must not do so at night unless all proper precautions for handling an accident have been taken. This clearly prohibits a person’s working by himself on such an experiment.
Zinn, Walter H. 1947. Zinn to Group Leaders & Division Directors, Apr. 2, 1947. “5 of 7,” Box 2, Records of the Laboratory Director’s Office, Program Correspondence Files, 1945-1953, RG 326. NARA-GL, Chicago, Illinois.
In a short time specific instructions for the procedure required in order to be able to work at night will be issued to you. In the meantime you are instructed to do no work after hours in the Laboratory in which any hazard whatsoever is involved without the permission of a Division Director and the knowledge and consent of the Health-Physics and Medical Departments.
(As a further aside, note that he refers to the Health-Physics Department. It’s interesting that this is a fully bedded down department, for the “profession” of Health Physics (it doesn’t have a dash any more) wasn’t “established” until sometime late in the Manhattan Project period.)
