The Manhattan Project was a top-secret World War II research and development program led by the United States, with collaboration from the United Kingdom and Canada, aimed at producing the first nuclear weapons. It operated from 1942 to 1946, involving around 130,000 people and costing nearly $2 billion at the time. The project was named after the Manhattan Engineer District, initially based in Manhattan, New York. It focused on developing both uranium and plutonium-based atomic bombs, with major production sites at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hanford, Washington, and the secret laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The project culminated in the creation of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which contributed to the end of World War II and marked the beginning of the nuclear age, with profound and lasting global impacts.
