Physicist Ted Hall is recruited to join the Manhattan Project as a teenager and goes to Los Alamos with no idea what he' | dG1fTlprQ3FzX1pJN0E
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 This is a recording for archive purposes.
00:02 The idea is to document Ted Hall's activities
00:06 in connection with his work on the atomic bomb.
00:09 I left high school at 15 and went to the University of Chicago
00:14 in my third year in the place, and I met Ted.
00:16 We just went around together.
00:17 Ted Hall was a man with a remarkable mind.
00:20 He was a senior at Harvard at the age of 18.
00:23 A recruiter from Washington came up.
00:25 His mission was to pick up a few very junior physicists
00:29 who helped in the research work at Los Alamos.
00:32 Suddenly, Ted went all serious and he said,
00:34 "There's something I have to tell you."
00:35 He was working on the implosion bomb.
00:41 It was one of the major secrets of the war.
00:45 We have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction.
00:51 Something gruesome and horrible was being constructed.
00:54 Knowledge should be shared.
00:57 They had decided they wanted to get in touch with the Soviets.
01:00 Ted had passed along the first information of this bomb
01:03 that would blow up Nagasaki.
01:05 This speeded up the Soviet development of the bomb by about five years.
01:10 He did agree to continue.
01:13 That was when the hunt resumed.
01:15 The FBI started following us.
01:18 The Rosenbergs were small fish compared to Ted Hall.
01:22 The Wunderkind spy.
01:25 It was very dangerous that the Americans had a monopoly of this weapon.
01:29 Did you provide information to the Soviet Union?
01:32 What should have been done with Ted Hall?
01:34 Shot.
01:35 The world has come extremely close to a real, actual, total disaster.
01:40 What made you do it?
01:42 I guess a major factor would be compassion.
01:46 [EXPLOSION]
01:48 [MUSIC]
01:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]
02:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]