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Equipment

AUG 01, 1953
Physics Today

Topsy just grew and Godiva is unclad, according to a Los Alamos description of two remote‐control devices currently being used in assembling critical masses with various configurations of fissionable materials. Topsy, a vertical hydraulic ram designed to bring one piece of shielded material together with another in an overhead housing, is equipped with paraphernalia to permit operation with a just self‐sustaining chain reaction and to provide for the insertion of neutron sources. Godiva, designed to measure the amount of unshielded material constituting a bare critical mass, brings three pieces of fissionable material together into a critical configuration. A TV system permits remote‐control operation from a safe distance.

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Volume 6, Number 8

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