The Manhattan Project needed lots of computers for such things as design, explosive yield, the physics of implosion, and more. At the time “computers” usually meant a woman whose job was to perform calculations by hand or with a mechanical calculator, the Marchant. Women with degrees in math and science often took jobs as computers because of discrimination in their own fields. As such, many of the women who became computers for the Manhattan Project were grossly overqualified for these jobs.

By 1943, about 20 computers worked in the T-5 Computation group at Los Alamos, under the supervision of Mary Frankel, wife of Stanley Frankel, who, with Eldred Nelson, organized the computing program. The wartime mechanical calculators were integral to the project, but lacked mechanical reliability and required routine repairs. Richard Feynman and Nicholas Metropolis started repairing the Marchant machines as an extracurricular activity and grew more adept at maintaining them, enabling the scientific staff to model complex experiments. Metropolis would later build the MANIAC computer at Los Alamos from a design by John von Neumann.

The Marchant calculator on display at the Los Alamos History Museum is a Figurematic from the 1950s. The women computers at Los Alamos would have worked on Marchant Silent Speed calculators, first developed in 1932, and continuously improved until the Figurematic line which was produced until the business closed in the early 1970s.

Originally part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Science in American Life exhibit which ran from 1994-2011, these mannequins of Enrico Fermi and Leona Woods Marshall Libby stood on a balcony overlooking a mock up of the Chicago Pile-1.

The mannequins used to greet visitors to the B Reactor at the tour headquarters in Hanford, Washington. Standing patiently at the back of the assembly room, they listened in on the history lecture and orientation meeting before visitors exited to board buses to the site.

The mannequins were acquired for the B Reactor by the Atomic Heritage Foundation for inclusion in future displays at the site. As such, Little Enrico and Little Leona were again transported to the B Reactor and wait patiently in the restroom, which is interesting since Leona was the only person to use the women’s restroom at the B Reactor. You can now visit them on your way to Enrico Fermi’s office.

Built in 1909 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the Mission Revival style, Lamy station was the southern terminus for the Santa Fe Southern Railway until 2014. Currently used by Amtrak’s Southwest Chief line, the station is 18 miles south of Santa Fe and the only way to get there by train and then a connecting bus.

Scientists arriving for work at Los Alamos by train were met at the Lamy station and escorted to 109 E Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, the gateway to the Manhattan Project and work on the hill.

The building is maintained as it looked so many years ago. Walking into the waiting area is taking a trip back in time, imagining rail passengers disembarking for Santa Fe.

In March, 1944, 200 grams of uranium 235 were shipped from Y-12 in Oak Ridge, TN, to Los Alamos. Army Lieutenants dressed as salesmen travelled by commercial train to Chicago, then to New Mexico — and through Lamy station — with the uranium concealed in two coffee-cup-sized gold-lined nickel containers inside a special briefcase.