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¶ Ulam's results contradicted the theories of the physicists. They had taken hope when the machines' early returns seemed to confirm the physicists. But when ENIAC's answers were complete, Ulam was vindicated, and the physicists had to start theorizing all over again.
¶ By early 1951 a crude thermonuclear experiment had been set up at Eniwetok in the Pacific—Operation Greenhouse. Says Teller: "What remains most clear in my mind is the contrast between the spectacular explosion, which in itself meant nothing, and the small piece of paper handed to me by my good friend Louis Rosen, which showed that the experiment was a success."
¶ But Greenhouse was not a bomb. On the hard road to the goal of the transportable bomb, Teller singles out two steps: an imaginative suggestion by Ulam and a fine calculation by Frederic de Hoffmann. Of De Hoffmann, Teller says:
"Since I had made the suggestion that led to [De Hoffmann's] calculation, I expected that we would jointly sign the report containing the results. Freddie, however, had other plans. He signed the report with my name only and argued that the suggestion counted for everything and the execution for nothing. I still feel ashamed that I consented."
By the time the first H-bomb was to be exploded, Teller had left Los Alamos to organize a nuclear weapons laboratory at Livermore, Calif. ("Science . . . thrives on friendly competition"). He watched for the results of the first H-bomb, "Mike," on a University of California seismograph. Teller writes: "The room was completely dark except for the tiny luminous spot that the pencil of light threw on the photographic paper . . . Soon the luminous point gave me the feeling of being aboard a gently and irregularly moving vessel, so I braced a pencil on a piece of the apparatus and held it close to the luminous point . . . About a quarter of an hour was required for the shock to travel, deep under the Pacific basin, to the California coast. I waited with little patience . . . At last . . . the luminous point appeared to dance wildly and irregularly. Was it only that the pencil which I held as a marker trembled in my hand? . . . Then the trace appeared on the photographic plate . . . clear and big and unmistakable . . . Mike was a success."
Duty & Faith. Nowhere in the article does Teller withdraw or modify his testimony about Oppenheimer before the AEC's security board when he said: "I would feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands" (than Oppenheimer's).
For those who still question the wisdom of going ahead with the H-bomb, Teller has words of firm faith: "We would be unfaithful to the tradition of Western civilization if we were to shy away from exploring the limits of human achievement. It is our specific duty as scientists to explore and to explain . . . The construction of the thermonuclear weapon was a great challenge to the technical people of this country. To be in possession of this instrument is an even greater challenge to the free community in which we live. I am confident that, whatever the scientists are able to discover or invent, the people will be good enough and wise enough to control it for the ultimate benefit of everyone."