Net proton (proton minus antiproton) and negative charge hadron spectra (h-) from central Pb+Pb collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron were measured and compared to spectra from central collisions of the lighter S+S system. Net baryon distributions were derived from those of net protons and net lambdas. Stopping, or rapidity shift with respect to the beam, of net protons and net baryons increase with system size. The mean transverse momentum &60;pT&62; of net protons also increase with system size. The h- rapidity density scales with the number of participant nucleons for nuclear collisions, where their &60;pT&62; is independent of system size. The &60;pT&62; dependence upon particle mass and system size is consistent with larger transverse flow velocity at midrapidity for central collisions of Pb+Pb compared to that of S+S.

The American system of nuclear weapons research and development was conceived and developed not as a result of technological determinism, but by a number of individual architects who promoted the growth of this large technologically-based complex. While some of the technological artifacts of this system, such as the fission weapons used in World War II, have been the subject of many historical studies, their technical successors--fusion (or hydrogen) devices--are representative of the largely unstudied highly secret realms of nuclear weapons science and engineering. In the postwar period a small number of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's staff and affiliates were responsible for theoretical work on fusion weapons, yet the program was subject to both the provisions and constraints of the US Atomic Energy Commission, of which Los Alamos was a part. The Commission leadership's struggle to establish a mission for its network of laboratories, least of all to keep them operating, affected Los Alamos's leaders' decisions as to the course of weapons design and development projects. Adapting Thomas P. Hughes's ''large technological systems'' thesis, I focus on the technical, social, political, and human problems that nuclear weapons scientists faced while pursuing the thermonuclear project, demonstrating why the early American thermonuclear bomb …