ATOMIC BOMB

Evening Star, Issue 25714, 11 February 1946, Page 6

ATOMIC BOMB

NOT DISCOVERED BY GERMANY AMERICA THREE YEARS AHEAD (R«c. 8 a.m.) HAMBURG, Feb. 10. Reports in Germany that Germans had invented the atomic bomb, which was acquired by the Allies after the capitulation for use against Japan, were groundless, said the Germau atomic scientist, Otto Hahn, in an interview with the ' Hamburger Presse Hahn, who recently returned to Germany after interrogation in Britain, added that it would have been impossible to manufacture the bomb in the short time between the German capitulation and the dropping of the first bomb on Japan. Germany had never reached the stage where it could actually have produced atomic bombs. " The Americans were three years ahead of Germany in the manufacture of the bomb because they invested a vast amount of money in research while we lacked funds," Hahn said. " When I first published the results of my research in 1939, 1 had no thought ot using the discovery for the purposes of war. During the war, Professors Heisenbeck and Harteck and others continued their research with a view to utilising the atom as a source of energy. The Germans knew there must be an element still higher in the periodical system of elements with an atomic weight of 239. It was left to the Americans to discover this new element —No. 94 in the periodical system of elements —and to produce it on an industrial scale. Element No. 94 is the atomic bomb.