Located in the home of the atomic bomb, Los Alamos, New Mexico, Bradbury Science Museum showcases the history of the Manhattan Project.

In 1953, director of nuclear testing, Dr. Robert Krohn, decided that the Los Alamos National Laboratory needed a location to house historical information on weapons research. Named after the second lab director, Norris E. Bradbury, the Laboratory established Bradbury Science Museum in an icehouse on Ashley Pond across from Fuller Lodge.

In the early 1960s, the museum added unclassified exhibits and moved the location to a larger, more public area. These exhibits included WWII era photos and papers that featured the development of Los Alamos as a town and lab, including current unclassified projects. The exhibits targeted school groups and families with children. Within the first year, 14,000 people visited the museum from forty countries and all fifty states.

Eventually, renovators redesigned the museum to be hands-on and self-guided, featuring videotapes and videodisks. During the 1990s, several events occurred important to the museum's history. First, the museum moved for the final time to downtown Los Alamos. In the summer of 1992, the Los Alamos Study Group, an anti-nuclear organization, petitioned for an exhibit area. Two years later, the Los Alamos Education group, an organization of former scientists and veterans, also petitioned for the same area. In order to appease both organizations, the museum rotates the respective groups' exhibits.

Currently, the museum contains exhibits separated into three galleries: Defense: Strengthening Global Security; Research: Science and Serving Society; and, The Nuclear Age Begins. Today, the museum receives 100,000 visitors a year who desire to learn about the development of a device that changed warfare forever.

Podcast Written and Narrated by Kelcie Lloyd, Public History Student at the University of West Florida.