Chicago Pile-1: A Brick History

Beginning in October 1942, and led by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, members of the classified Metallurgical Laboratory project worked to build a lattice of graphite bricks and uranium into a 20-foot-tall, spherical-shaped structure known as Chicago Pile-1 — hoping it would create a chain reaction that would grow from the splitting of a single uranium nucleus. On December 2, 1942, after a series of delays, CP-1 first achieved a self-sustaining fission chain reaction and marked the dawn of the Atomic Age.