atomic arms over japan. one in hiroshima, the other in nagasaki. up next david bruen recalls graduating from northwestern university --dieter gruen recalls graduating from northwestern university and joining the atomic bomb project. he discusses government support for science from the 1940's to the present day. this is from the voices of the manhattan project, created by the heritage foundation and los alamos historical society. born onn: i was november 21, 1922 in waldorf, germany. interviewer: where is that? mr. gruen: waldorf is a small village near the town of

[indiscernible] better-knownar the .own of why more -- weimar interviewer: what was your childhood like? wasgruen: my childhood very, very pleasant. my father was the principal of a school. my mother -- my father had a devoted marriage. i had one brother older than i. in that village. went to primary school there.

and did all the things that ,mall children, little boys do including using a roller skate on a steep hill and scaring my mother out of her skull with my derring-do. [laughter] ?nterviewer: was it mountainous rollerskating on a steep hill? no, this was a hill in the village. on top of the hill there was a church. the countryside was hilly, not mountainous. but a very beautiful region where my family and i did a good deal of hiking on weekends. it was a very, very pleasant countryside.

at that time. interviewer: how did you happen to wind up in the united states and the manhattan project? -- in the manhattan project? mr. gruen: well, you ask a very interesting question. answer is that i was no longer able to go to school would the hitler jugen beat me up after school. i wanted clear that if to survive, i would have to leave. relatives ini had who tookck, arkansas

me into their home. there is an interesting sidelight connected with that. my uncle was a personal friend of senator joseph taylor robinson. who was the majority leader of during the first roosevelt administration and , theh to pass, for example and manyagall act other important pieces of legislation. my uncle had approached him on my behalf. he wrote a letter to the american ambassador in berlin. in then i arrived there summer of 1937 to pick up my

visa, they rolled out the red carpet for me. [laughter] , unimportantar-old person. country, went to high school in little rock. parents were also able to get a visa. 1939, justn early before war was declared in europe. chicago.ed in i have been a chicagoan ever since. how did i get on the manhattan project?

i began as a student at northwestern university in 1941. just before pearl harbor. it was the policy of the united , enunciated innt fact by president franklin delano roosevelt that they recognize that this war would depend on america's industrial the best would require scientific and engineering talent that would be available. encouraged students who

were within a couple of years of graduation to continue their studies. continue able to studying science, chemistry, and andics at northwestern received my baccalaureate degree cum laude in 1944. i was supposed to go to work at the metallurgical laboratories on the campus of the university of chicago, which was part of the manhattan project. 1944 the net labs, as they were called, had already achieved their primary objectives. the first one, under the leadership of an rico fermi, -- en rico fermi -- an rico

-- enrico fermi, was finished in 1942. the second, revolving around the plutonium discovered 1940 at berkeley was to develop a separations process that could be scaled and used for kilogram quantities separation of plutonium. o has been accomplished by 1943.

-- had been a congress by 1943. when i finished -- had been accomplished by 1943. when i finished my studies, the met labs were not there anymore. so, i went to oak ridge to work on the uranium project. so, i did that. i got on a train and went from bus to and then took a oak ridge. in september of 1944. that is how i got on the manhattan project. so, did any of your colleagues also get swept up in the manhattan project? or were you just singled out among your colleagues to go? at northwestern, as far as i know, i was the only

one to go on the manhattan project. irving, wasrofessor a consultant to the manhattan project. he did important work on biological materials at northwestern. onlyr as i know, i am the actually went to work on the manhattan project from northwestern. >> do you remember what they told you that you would be working on? it was top secret. how did they recruit you? [laughter] well, when i got to oak ridge i said that i wanted divisionthe research

rather than the engineering aspects of the work. so, i was assigned to work with a man who later actually became the director of the oak ridge national laboratory. he wasn i worked for him the director of the chemist late -- chemistry part of the research program. at oak ridge. and i went into his office. .nd he went to a safe he opened the safe and pulled out a handbook of physics and up totry and he opened it

a table of the elements and appointed to uranium and said -- this is what we're working on. [laughter] well, uranium had a codename that had been invented by the british. tubes called to alloy -- alloy. the uranium produced in great the tubeas produced by alloy company. the codename for it -- we were not allowed to use uranium and our conversations about the work -- was tube alloy. dayse reports from those with two alloy in the title. tube alloy in the title.

that's what i was working on. yourruen: -- interviewer: boss, what was his name? mr. gruen: i cannot bring it up at the moment. it will occur to me. interviewer: eugene? mr. gruen: no, not him. interviewer: did you know him? mr. gruen: i did not, no. he had aer: because laboratory, but it was the wide 12 campus. 2 campus. mr. gruen: i was at that campus. he was a famous mathematician. i met him many years later, actually, on a visit to israel. it turned out that he and i were both visiting the university and staying in the same hotel. other just very,

very casually. that was my only contact with him. interviewer: so, you worked on why-12. 12.y- what research were you involved in? the chemistry? mr. gruen: the chemistry, with several different areas of the chemical aspects of the project. , the ion beams in calutronson's -- began as uranium tetrachloride. we developed processes for the synthesis of large quantities of

very pure uranium tetrachloride. , heated,e encapsulated and then the paper of uranium byrachloride was ionized energetic electron particle beamsto make uranium ion that were then separated into uranium 235 and uranium 238. so, then it became another chemical project to separate the uranium from the graphite collectors. spectrometers, there were collectors made of graphite into which the uranium ions were injected. about the only way that you could recover the uranium was to burn graphite. in oxygen.

and then you are left with uranium oxide. givene of the tasks i was was to synthesize an indicator, a color dye that would be stable in very concentrated nitric acid. is that infor this the final stages of separation, , orium oxide was dissolved uranium peroxide was dissolved in nitric acid and then extracted, the uranium nitrate was extracted into an organic solid. that determined the columns of the interface between the aqueous phase and the organic phase. i succeeded in producing

, a very new material brilliantly blue colored material. one microgram was sufficient to color a leader of solution and was perfectly stable in nitric acid solutions. so, i did a number of different projects. most people do not think about chemical problems related to the separation of uranium isotopes. a physical thing. but it turns out there are a number of important technical problems that had he resolved. so, when i came to a bridge in -- when i came44 to the ridge in september of

1944, the place was in an uproar. the magnets have burned out. they had to be shipped back. so, the project was delayed. production was delayed. arrived, those magnets were back and had been reassembled. the all for in the beta process, we made kilogram quantities of uranium 255 between september of or may ofbout april 1945. alamoss shipped to los

and found its way into what became the hiroshima bomb. bomb which hadm never been tested. in fact, hiroshima was a test for that first atomic bomb. the nagasaki mom was a plutonium bomb that had been tested. the uranium bomb had never been tested. that was the end result of our labors. interviewer: interesting, you mentioned that chemistry played an important part of this whole the youof extracting 235. but this might report, which was written at the end of the war

doesn't talk about chemistry. it was still classified. it was still classified? the chemistry far -- part? interviewer: you guys are still heroes, but the credit goes to the physicists because that's what they can talk about, but the chemists for years have been these silent, unsung heroes. mr. gruen: well, these reports that i wrote were declassified and i was able to get them many years later. if you were interested, i could make those available to you. yeah, there was some chemistry involved in doing all of this.

it's one of the untold parts of the story. tell me a little bit about your inventions. you talked a little bit about inventing this unique dye. or you told by a supervisor to figure it out? and then you figured it out by yourself? how did that happen? well, my group leader said that we needed such a thing. i went by bus from oak ridge to knoxville several times, to the university of knoxville library. and i, as an undergraduate, had

synthesized in an organic copper that was heart of one of the experiments in the chemistry lab. an organic chemistry lab. if onead the idea that could attach certain groups to , it should be possible to make it water-soluble. there were hints in the literature that this could be fused sulfuric acid. so, i went into the lab and tried it and work. so, that is how it came to be. guidance.without

this was a good thing. used at oak ridge. the people who had this problem were pretty happy with the result. so, it enabled them to -- why don't you explain again the difference that it made in the process. a. gruen: well, if you have two liquids -- second touch each other, both colorless, you cannot tell where one of them ends and the other begins. dye in one of the liquid, it's very clear where the interface is. someone --extracting something from one liquid to the other, then you want to know

where that separation occurs so you can make the actual separation. --s just a visual way of it's a visual sensor. thingsewer: one of the that the national parks service wants to do in reviewing the manhattan project is to mine it for all of the science and technology lessons. this would be a good example for students to try to understand high school chemistry. mr. gruen: that's a good idea. lots of things were developed there. of all the things that were rediscovered years later, very laboriously they had already been done.

that's right. so,gruen: -- interviewer: did you get the sense that there was a lot of innovation going on mr.he manhattan project? gruen: oh, the whole thing was innovation. been invented had by ernest orlando lawrence, who had received the nobel for the cyclotron. he was one of the great scientists. g, who i got to know later and we became very the friends, was one of great scientists and a man who influenced my life in a very profound way.

these were great men, yes. they made lots of innovations. [laughter] an amazing generation of scientists. well, it didn't take just a nobel prize wehner. it was young people like yourself. how did they empower you to be innovators? interviewer: -- mr. gruen: well, in my experience, just talking very subjectively, that kind of empowerment comes from the individual, very largely. you either have it or you don't.

you can't make somebody do something new. womanntist is a man or a who does or says something new. you know, not everyone can do that. you -- you canw encourage people to work and to study. to get real innovation, it's a good question. i don't know how to answer it really. thegruen: -- interviewer: manhattan project was certainly a crucible for innovation. something like 6500 patents were done in secret. how probably understates

many new gadgets and approaches and whatever. mr. gruen: only 6000? [laughter] interviewer: only 6000. this was all in less than three years. mr. gruen: well, it's a new field, of course. it was a totally new field and a tremendous amount of scientific creativity. have an environment in which you tell people that there is a certain goal you want to achieve and we will give you the resources to build it and the , then you can get a lot accomplished. if you don't insist that every experiment has to be

written according to certain safety standards. [laughter] next chemical has to be in . unique materials, science, data sheets, safety sheets. i'm all in favor of safety. i've never had a laboratory accident. emphasis that is put on safety today i think exceeds what is required to do laboratory and it has gotten to the point where it inhibits them in laboratory work. but that's just my opinion. i'm not advocating unsafe practices by any means. i've always been conscious of safety. but i think that today that aspect is a little overdone.

if we had had to do that in those days, we couldn't have achieved what we did in a short period. interviewer: how much did you know about what was going on in the plan? you know it would be used for an atomic bomb? how much did you understand? dieter: i knew it was going to be used for an atomic bomb. done, i knew was nothing about. about bomb design or any problems associated with those weapons.

we knew what we had to do in make good quantities of uranium 235. extent of our the knowledge. we certainly didn't have an overall grasp. interviewer: did you just figure that out on your own? dieter: no one told us, no one talked about it. wondering what we were doing and why we were doing it. we had to come to certain conclusions.

there was no discussion from management about what was going on. interviewer: what did you think at the time? howdid you have a sense explosive this weapon would be? you ever question if this was the right thing to do? before the bomb was dropped? no. i didn't think about it. talkede of my colleagues about it. the atmosphere, we were under pressure to get something done.

and my personal feeling was we have to win the war, for obvious reasons. but the consequence of what we was something i thought about only afterwards. and then i became very involved in that. after the war. interviewer: t want to talk about that? want to talk about that?

after the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs were dropped and , it is veryover hard to reconstruct the feeling that existed in this country about atomic work. --ple talked about adams it wereoms as if something new and totally unexpected and mysterious and secret. if you talk to a person on the , it is very atoms hard to reconstruct the intense people -- the intense feeling people had about it, the atomic

science. one of the messages we had was that there are no secrets about there is no defense against atomic weapons. organization an called the oak ridge engineers and scientists. we wanted to create public of what urgency there is in presenting anything like this from happening again. together with two colleagues, we

sent a letter to more than 100 of the outstanding personalities of the time. people who had been involved in others. project and two scientists, including albert einstein. we raised the question what to preventto be done nuclear weapons from being used in war. we received replies from almost every letter we had sent out. very thoughtful replies. i still have those. there was one from outward einstein in which he said the only solution would be a world government. , inrom albert einstein

which he said the only solution would be a world government. i am still waiting for that. [laughter] closely the hearings that were taken place on capitol hill on the mcmahon act that advocated civilian control. and the may act in the house that advocated military control. there were people in our -- rumor had it at the conclusion of every hearings bills,y hearing on these we had a transfer of those hearings. stayed up for hours condensing these into a newspaper article. the following day i would drive and deliver that to

the knoxville journal. the mcmahon bill actually established the national labs. i think they were established as a result of the passage of the mcmahon act. in a way my entire life has been involved with argon national i guess the manhattan was a very formative experience.

in led to the place where i did all of the work that i continued for so many years. interviewer: you went back to chicago and argon international laboratory was born as a result of the mcmahon act. inter: argon was established 1946 i went back to , i leftfrom oak ridge oak ridge in april of 1946. i went back to start graduate .ork with my former mentor

when i was that approached to join argon. i wanted to finish what i had started and i left after a year that i have gotten a masters degree from northwestern. went to work at argon. and it was possible for me to continue graduate work from the university of chicago while i was working at argon. dissertation on the of neptune em -- of neptunium compounds, that's 93 . he was very interested in my work, because i was able to show

in very great detail they packed a hypothesis. it was the correct picture for the electronic structure. that was a very fruitful period. i had worked at argon in chemical problems associated with the building of a nuclear submarine. became the national center for the develop meant of nuclear reactors, power reactors.

argon was established as the center for the development of power reactors. was arst power reactor nuclear submarine reactor. there was a very important chemical problems that had to be .olved that was one of the first things. interviewer: what was that problem? him -- thes akoni the zirconiumim -- contained halfmium. zirconium to be

hafniuma cladding, the had to be removed. to remove hafnium from those in akoni him -- from the zirc onium, and the zirconium being corrosion, all containonium did not any hafnium. to chemical process is

remove the hafnium. it's not an easy thing. interviewer: they say one of the problems of the german effort to that thetomic bomb was businesses didn't consult with the chemists about the impurities and the graphite. dieter: the germans did not realize that all graphite contains -- that's absolutely right. they were able to get the manufacturers of the graphite used in chicago to be going wrong -- to be boron free.

[laughter] interviewer: they are pretty heavy, too. i thought they cut a football team or some type of thing involved. in setting up the lattice. dieter: are you sure it was a football team? maybe they banned football at that time. dieter: it was built under the west stands of the football stadium. interviewer: i feel like it was columbia. they had built some graphite.

dieter: there was a very famous lady involved. -- was a close associate of when i was a graduate student at woods cameity, leona walking into our lab one time because my mentor was using a .ew technique they want to know how this worked. he looked around for five minutes and said, oh, i see. i see how this works. interviewer: that's great.

i didn't realize that they were together after the war as well. woods. for me and leona dieter: when i was a student starting in 1947, our apartment was on 53rd street. university avenue. bike pastd write his our apartment every morning at 8:00. i would look at my window and it was time to get up and get dressed.

he was a professor at the university after the war until he died. interviewer: was he a good professor? dieter: he was the most marvelous teacher. i listened to his lecture and understood everything he said. great lecture. and great teacher. he would have lunch with his undergraduates every day in the commons. you would see him there talking to students. interviewer: i don't think it was too common to have women scientists. leona was his right hand. dieter: she was very close to

him. those were great days at the university of chicago. leona finally married. interviewer: what was teller like? dieter: he lived really close to where we were but i didn't know him. i would see him but i don't know him personally. know very much about his personality. but i found out from other people who didn't know him. interviewer: did you ever meet some arm? i met him, but again i didn't know him. knew yuri. re--- i

he ws actually my graduate advisor at the university. interviewer: you are in good hands as a student. dieter: the best. i was very fortunate. interviewer: you mentioned on the side of hiking in the great smoky's -- can you tell us more about your life in oak ridge, what it was like in those days?

dieter: i lived in a dormitory with construction workers of k 25. when ijust being held arrived there. and that was quite an experience. [laughter] interviewer: where was this dormitory? dieter: west village 54. it was on the outskirts of town. we had a very interesting group of young scientists there. addicted.hers became we would go whenever we had the chance.

the park was dedicated by president roosevelt in 1937, i believe. we were there just two years later when it was in the tourist attraction that it is now. that is a place valley surrounded by hills. and that houses a community of early english settlers. and they still spoke sort of elizabethan speech. they had been isolated for 100 years. still a functioning community of the church. and they had not yet been evicted, even though that was the great smoky national

park. sort of the tail end. that was fascinating. -- that was a fascinating experience for me. and we talked about every subject under the sun. as i said before it was a very formative period in many ways. interviewer: were you single during this time? dieter: yes. interviewer: how were the numbers in terms of single women and single men in your favor? there were a lot of women, weren't there? many of the people that

were married, fortunately they invited me over for dinner. that was good. the number of uncommitted ladies was not that large. the food was horrible. there was nothing to drink. it was dry. kentucky to get some liquor. oak ridge was dry.

but they were manned by women. these were mostly high school girls, totally untrained. they manned the control panels. they did a good job. even if they were uneducated, they were very faithful workers. interviewer: you had fun on the weekends. did you work hard during the week? dieter: yes. shiftsewer: were there yet awarded you have a normal -- in the what i was doing

research part of the lab, we had 825 kind of hours -- o five kind of ours. we never burned the midnight oil. we have free time over the was intense. interviewer: when did you meet your wife? wife the fallmy of 1947. we were both graduate students at the university of chicago. was in psychology, i was in science. that is how we met.

interviewer: you are employed by argonne. what did she do? dieter: after she got her degree she became director of in ourogical services school system in chicago. she had a career there. later she went into private and she was in private practice for about 20 years. wasork on -- work at argonn strongly influenced by my experiences in the manhattan project.

reflecting back to what i did , i wouldost of my life have to say that my scientific origins in the poweration that nuclear was something really new and and that there were two sides. one constructive, and one destructive. it can be used as a nonpolluting energy.ive source of for the rest of my scientific the i devoted myself to

solution of this very daunting of howllenging problem to create a sustainable nonpolluting global energy source. over the years that has become a very important and very pressing because we are now in a pollutingwhere we are the planet with greenhouse gases and it could lead to making the planet uninhabitable. it is absolutely essential if we are to continue living a that requires a lot of energy, and there are 7 billion of us and now that do

whatever we can end as quickly as possible to find a new energy source. so i spent many years on nuclear fission power reactors. delegate at the second international, on peaceful use of atomic energy. it took place in geneva switzerland. i have maintained that interest all my life. later on i began to be interested in problems associated with the practical use of fusion energy.

and a lot of fundamental work problems thath are encountered when you try to thatte plasma machines would produce power. it became clear as the years effortsthat worldwide were mounted both for fission reactors and fusion reactors that divine -- that define such an alternative source. it is maybe the most challenging that faces science and technology today. extremely challenging.

i have finally come to the conclusion that because of the problems that are encountered with fission reactors, chernobyl, three mile island, , there are problems associated not only with operating these machines but also in the storing of these massive amounts of radioactivity and in this country there has been no nuclear reactor built in 40 years. you have to ask yourself why that is. fusion reactors have been under serious development for 54 years now.

they had achieved breakeven conditions. that means you get as much to getout as you put in a self-sustaining plasma that -- gives you back as much energy as he put income at that has not yet been achieved. that is only the beginning. it is not clear, at least not to , that fusion reactors, power reactors can be built. you are trying to produce conditions that exist. i have come to the conclusion have ando not alternative energy us --

alternative energy source available to us. forever, itthere has given us life. -- it has produced all of the fossil fuels we are now earning up very quickly. it took 100 or more million years. the sun has been around, the sun will be around, and we have to learn how to use it more order for solar power to be able to compete with fossil fuel or nuclear power. set --pinion the large

the large-scale use of solar power depends on making it cheaper. it economically with theve conventional power plants. so i am spending my retirement in developing a new approach to using solar power more efficiently to make it twice as efficient. that is to make the conversion of light to electricity twice as efficient as it is now. to double the power from sunshine. that is what i am working on. if i trace the connections of i end up with a

manhattan project. so i think there is a direct connection between what i am what i did all those many years ago. that is kind of amusing. interviewer: that is a great story. i hope you succeed. too.r: i hope so it is a difficult situation someone in my position. there is such competition for funding these days to get .omething done

to follow these ideas at my age is not an easy task. interviewer: you have to have some young radford students here. >> i have no problem finding graduate students or faculty at the were people national laboratory to work on this problem. first they have to support their families before they can do this.

that is something that has changed in a fundamental way. it is my perception that today people are focused on short-term game -- short-term gain. it used to be so easy to get funding. it is not so easy to get funding and what you are touched funding for what you are involved in either. -- it is not so easy to get funding for what you are involved with either. it used to be easier. at least there was a period that was at ar ii much higher level than it is today. and i am concerned about this

by not focusing more on basic scientific research. i hope i'm wrong. but i don't know. they used to say science, the endless frontier. i think he was right. it is not going to stop. envelope,t push the and other people are going to do it. and they will develop the technologies of the future.

i think that is the inevitable of a lack of concern in funding science. i don't know how to change that. me are in a unique position to contribute a national debate about these issues. he spent a large fraction of -- of what one might call the modern scientific and technological age. happened to has

material style -- to materials science and nano science, all of this stuff has happened in the last 70 years. the kind of perspective that you can get when you have lived through it and have been active, you may be a will to contribute something. that resource is not being tapped. there's nobody that has ever asked me for an opinion about these matters.

i don't know how you do it from your perspective. the fact that you have to persuade people to support the andect you are involved in they don't immediately recognize this as a very important period in this country's history, eight finding period, and to increase public awareness of where we are now compared to where we are then. and then gaining some insight and wisdom from the way things have developed. people hold in their palms more power than had existed from the astronauts.

they don't even think about the fact that when they use the smartphone, they have to recharge it every night, and you are just plugging it into the wall. but suppose the law doesn't recharge the battery. make the connection between the energy you are using and then norma's amounts of allr that are required to the computing that is done in the world today. people talk lively about the electric automobile. if we had 100 million electric automobiles in this country and you select them all enough the

same time, you would blow a national fuse. writing? they are nonpolluting -- right? they are nonpolluting. they don't make the connection to the power that is required to run this. there has been an information technology revolution. what we need is energy technology. and we have to think about how to bring that about. so your friends at the , unsurent of energy they want to do something.

but they don't have the wherewithal. they keep cutting back on the budgets of the department of energy. that is my message for today. scientific research is basically becauseg funded anymore of the industrial research labs. i read just the other day general electric has put $30 million into a company. this company takes inventors ideas and selects them very careful lee and translates them into products. what i take away his general electric is a supporting company

that commercializes inventions that they should be making in their own labs. they must find it economically advantageous to outsource innovation and commercialization of innovation, rather than doing it in the house. so that is what has happened in industrial research. many companies had research labs in the 50's and 60's and closed them down, but are not supporting basic research anymore. i used to be on the editorial of applied physics and applied physics letters.

the number of scientific manuscripts today, coming out of to these journalists is larger than the number of papers admitted. papers have been submitting larger numbers than u.s. papers. i feel very fortunate. i wish people could as well.

that's just the latest. we need another manhattan project. do it if we had another manhattan project for solar power. he could do it. interviewer: are you concerned there's so much in the public domain about how the bomb was and the ingredients were produced -- ingredients that were produced. >> centrifuges was just in its

infant -- just in its infancy during the manhattan project. that technology has come to such an extent that it is not the way . i doubt there is anything in the manhattan project's secret literature that would have any on centrifuge technology. i don't know. it could be but i doubt it. they are going to get a nuclear weapon, that is for sure. if they don't already have it.

interviewer: how do you feel that the use of the atomic bomb on japan? dieter: there is a story that oppenheimer walked into truman's office and said, i have blood on my hands. and that is the last time truman ever spoke to him. what choice did the commander have at that moment in history except to authorize dropping the atomic bomb? he didn't have a choice. as gruesome as it was and horrified as i and my colleagues was at that time, i feel it

the correct decision. it brought an end to the most horrible war, saved millions of lives, american and japanese soldiers. to regulate personal responsibility? of course. i took part in fact. was it the correct decision? quite a few men were in europe and at the end of the european there were loaded with books

and transferred to san francisco. way to then their invasion of japan. when the bombs were dropped they were very happy. they didn't have to fight in the pacific. i know several guys who were in that position. we must not let it happen again. if iran gets the bomb and drops it on israel, that will be world

war iii and that will be the end of all of us. that's my feeling. interviewer: how long can you suppose it would have been that some videos would have figured it out? dieter: the fear was germany would get the bomb because vision had been discovered. everybody thought if anybody gets the bomb it would be germany. the fact that you now have almost a dozen nations that have shows that if a

technology is possible and has been demonstrated it will be replicated. way of stopping it. if the united states had not done it, and start -- instead of what started five for teen years , by now we would have a nuclear armed world. even without the manhattan project. don't you think so? the nuclear weapon is no harder to make money smartphone. seen how they make chips. it is a pretty sophisticated operation. at least as sophisticated as making an atomic bomb.

interviewer: what should the to preventtion to other people from using this technology? dieter: a good question. we asked that question in 1945. told us wetein needed a world government. we have the genie out of the bottle and we can't put it back.

interviewer: do you credit the fact that we haven't had an armageddon in the last 70 years -- to what do you credit the fact that we haven't had an armageddon in the last 70 years? dieter: we haven't had a leader crazy enough to pull the trigger. you would have to be insane to do it. i shudder to think what would happen if terrorists would get a hold of it. watching american

history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. forow us on twitter information on her schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest news. >> all persons having business before the supreme court of the united states. petitioner versus arizona. wade. versus >> it is probably the most famous case this court ever decided. here on land slavery wasn't legally recognized. >> putting this to affect would take federal orders and the presence of troops and marshals

and the courage of children. >> we wanted to pick cases that changed direction and also changed society. >> she told him they would have to have a search. they refused to do, so she grabbed it out of his hands to look at it and thereafter the police officer handcuffed her. better waythink of a to bring the constitution to life than by telling the human stories behind great supreme court cases. he boldly imposed the force internment of japanese americans during world war ii. after being convicted for failing to report for relocation

, he took his case all the way to the supreme court. >> quite often in many of our mages decisions are ones that the court took that were quite unpopular. >> if you had to pick one freedom that was the most essential to the functioning of the democracy it had to be freedom of speech. >> let's go through a few cases that illustrate what it means to of 310 millionty different people who stick together because they believe in a rule of law. fama and expiration of 12 historic supreme court decisions. a new series on c-span, produced in cooperation with the national constitution center, debuting monday

>> lewin herbert hoover came to the white house as trained geologists, -- just month into rivers term, the financial market crashed. first lady lou hoover used her office to advocate volunteerism and charity. as the great depression deepened, one term ended amidst overwhelming public frustration. lou hoover, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series, verse ladies -- first ladies, investigating the public and private lives of history's first ladies. p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span tv -- on c-span3. artifactsek, american takes you to museums and historic places to learn what artifacts reveal about american history.