Kellex Corporation

Cindy Kelly: It is Sunday, May 15, 2016, and we’re in Houston, Texas. I want to start by asking you to tell me your name and then spell it. Dorothy Ritter: My name is Dorothy Oley Ritter. D-O-R-O-T-H-Y O-L-E-Y R-I-T-T-E-R. Kelly: All right. Dorothy, why don’t we begin by having you tell us something about […]

Jersey City was home to the headquarters of the M. W. Kellogg Company, which specialized in chemical engineering projects. In 1942, the S-1 Committee tasked Kellogg with conducting research into the feasibility of the gaseous diffusion process for separating uranium isotopes. As the Manhattan Project began, Kellogg’s vice president of engineering, Percival “Dobie” Keith, took […]

Stephane Groueff: Mr. Hobbs, part two. So to go now to how you were contacted for the Manhattan Project. J.C. Hobbs: You see, [Ludwig] Skog was one in the group and had me in on – Groueff: And [William Francis] Gibbs. Hobbs: I had a chance to sit in meetings with him probably half a […]

Alfred Nier: By the summer of 1943, the question came up, what I should do next? And I had a chance to – [J. Robert] Oppenheimer had gotten a hold of me and suggested I might come out to Los Alamos. Stephane Groueff: And you knew him? Nier: I knew him, yes. I had met […]

Stephane Groueff: Now, we could start with a letter of [Enrico] Fermi and a letter of [John] Dunning, because the way Dunning explained the thing that he had the idea that uranium-235 was— Alfred Nier: The one that was responsible, yes. Groueff: And that Fermi on the contrary, that’s the opposite. And [Niels] Bohr was […]

Sir Hugh Taylor: I had been requested by the British Government to find out certain things. They wanted, for example, to know whether they could use this thing and the General Electric Company made it available to them on the condition that their affiliate in England was entrusted with the responsibility of supplying it. It […]

[Interviewed by Cynthia Kelly and Tom Zannes.] Robert Kupp: My name is Robert William Kupp. Did you say spell it? Yes. [Laughter.] Kupp: Robert William K-U-P-P. And the age is eighty-two. I’ll be eighty-three next month in July. So, Mr. Kupp, I wanted to know, what were you doing before you came to the Secret […]