First atomic pile patent issuedIn 1955, the highly classified U.S. patent (No. 2,708,656) for the first atomic pile was finally issued, 11 years after it had been filed on 19 Dec 1944. Work on the initial patent application had started six months before the reactor was completed. The patent was titled “Neutronic Reactor,” listed Fermi and Leo Szilard as co-inventors, had 42 diagrams, and described the method by which a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction had been accomplished. Enrico Fermi and his team of scientists at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory (predecessor to Argonne National Laboratory) ushered in the nuclear age when they achieved the world's first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on 2 Dec 1942. Fermi died on 28 Nov 1954, six months before the patent was issued.« |
