Los Banos Rotary Club History
Merced Chemist Tells of “A” Bomb

Members of the Los Banos Rotary Club were privileged Tuesday noon, to hear a decidedly interesting and understandable explanation of the famous atom bomb. Milton Babitz, chemistry instructor at the Merced high school, was the speaker, and his presentation of a highly technical subject was so understandable that many Rotarians were able, for the first time, to grasp a working idea of what it’s all about.

Development of the atomic bomb, Babitz explained, is not the brainchild of one particular nation, but rather the combined result of research performed over the past 100 years by the world’s leading scientists. It was in 1850 that a French Scientist first began experimenting with uranium, the basic ore from which the atom bomb is manufactured.

Today, Babitz warned, no single nation or group of nations controls the atomic bomb. We produced the first atomic bomb at a cost of two billion dollars and any country that is willing to spend that kind of money can do the same thing of money can do the same thing within a period of from two to four years.
Babitz told of the tremendous amount of experimental and development work that was done by the United States, Canada and Great Britain, to produce the two bombs which so suddenly ended the war with Japan, and of newer and less expensive methods now devised for producing the prime requisites of the bomb itself.

As to possible peacetime use, Babitz said that it has untold possibilities but said that they could not be developed until such time as it is learned how to control the uranium rays, which are similar to X-rays, but so potent that close proximity destroys body resistance in human beings. Experience learned in the bombing of Japan, Babitz explained, indicates that persons subjected to the atom rays are unable to resist disease and quickly die of pneumonia and other diseases.

March 5, 1946

 

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