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Los Alamos Influence

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This clearly goes to show how the work done at Los Alamos was an enormous influence even on his later work in life.
So not only did the work at Los Alamos have a profound effect on Feynman, but his work was also an important contribution towards completion of the project. According to Peter Galison in a paper titled Feynman’s War: Modelling Weapons, Modelling Nature, he notes: “In terms of the Los Alamos mission to deliver a workable nuclear weapon, Feynman’s supervision of numerical implosions was probably as important as anything he did.” This implies that this work was on the same level of importance as his later work, which says a lot since this is the work that he is most acclaimed for; the work that is responsible for his reputation …show more content…

While waiting for the IBM machines to arrive and be fully set up, Feynman and the computing group set up a race to see which was faster between the human computers using Marchant calculators and the punch card machines. This was primarily used to gauge the effectiveness of the new parallel algorithm and practice using it, but he found that the human computers could solve at roughly the same pace as the IBM machines, but suffered fatigue over time where the machines could work continuously. In a way this change in how large-scale numerical problems were solved was a transition from the old days of human computing with calculators to the modern concept of machine computers with human operators and …show more content…

One major issue affecting the effort was the morale of the people that were assigned to operate the IBM machines. To operate these new machines the Army had sent soldiers from the “Special Engineer Detachment” to fill the roles. This program was developed by the Army to make use of soldiers with technical backgrounds in filling needed positions for the various scientific projects such as efforts at Los Alamos and Oak

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