Los Alamos Primer

Blurb

The Los Alamos Primer was a printed version of the first five lectures on the principles of nuclear weapons given to new arrivals at the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory during the Manhattan Project. They were originally given by the physicist Robert Serber after being delivered in person on April 5-14, 1943, based on conclusions reached at a conference held in July and September 1942 at the University of California, Berkeley by Robert Oppenheimer. The notes from the lecture which became the Primer were written by Edward Condon.
The first paragraph states the intention of the Los Alamos laboratory during World War II:
The object of the project is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the energy is released by a fast neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show nuclear fission.
The Primer contained the basic physical principles of nuclear fission, as they were known at the time, and their implications for nuclear weapon design.