Y-12 Logos [POSTCARD]

Oak Ridge, TN: Y-12 National Security Complex, n.d.. Presumed first edition thus. Postcard. Standard size with illustration on front and text on half of the back. Very good. This postcard has a backgroun picture of the Y-12 plant (nestled in the Bear Creek Valley). There are five logos presented. One is a patch which is the original Manhattan Project insigna. Two prominantly display Y-12 and Oak Ridge. One is an Atoms for Peace logo. One has Y-12 less prominantely presented and is a Union Carbide Logo showing the symbol of the traveling atom, a submarine, a missile, and a plant building.On February 18, 1943, in the midst of the second World War, ground was broken in rural East Tennessee for the first production building at the Y-12 Electromagnetic Separation Plant. The plant's job was to make enough enriched uranium for a new kind of bomb, an atomic bomb.In a short time Bear Creek Valley, where the plant is located, was filled with machinery and the bustle of people on a mission. At its peak in 1945, more than 22,000 workers were employed at the site. Thirty months later the success of Y-12's mission was announced to the world when after two atomic weapons (the uranium bomb, Little Boy, and the plutonium bomb, Fat Man) were detonated, the Empire of Japan surrendered and World War II ended. Y-12 had separated the uranium used in Little Boy.Since that time Y-12's missions have changed. Y-12 played a key part in the production of thermonuclear weapons, helping win the Cold War with 8,000 people working around the clock to produce nuclear weapon secondaries.