The World's First Nuclear Reactor Was Built Under a Squash Court

On December 2, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi achieved the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction beneath the west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago — inside an old squash court. The device, called Chicago Pile-1, was a crude stack of uranium and graphite blocks with wooden control rods. There were no radiation shields. Nobody told the city of Chicago. If the experiment had gone wrong, the consequences for a densely populated neighborhood are difficult to imagine. Arthur Compton, who oversaw the work, phoned James Conant with a coded message: "The Italian navigator has just landed in the New World." The original squash courts were demolished in 1957. Today, a Henry Moore sculpture titled "Nuclear Energy" marks the exact spot on Ellis Avenue where the first self-sustaining chain reaction took place. A plaque on a nearby wall records that here, on December 2, 1942, the first self-sustaining chain reaction was achieved, opening the way to the controlled use of nuclear energy.