The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 brought together for the first time in one department most of the Federal Government's energy programs. With these programs came a score of organizational entities each with its own history and traditions, from a dozen departments and independent agencies. The History Division has prepared a series of monographs on The Origins of the Department of Energy. Each explains the history, goals, and achievements of a predecessor agency or a major program of the Department of Energy. "The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb" is a short history of the origins and development of the American atomic bomb program during World War II. Beginning with the scientific development of the pre-war years, the monograph details the role of United States government in conducting a secret, nationwide enterprise that took science from the laboratory and into combat with an entirely new type of weapon. The monograph concludes with a discussion of the immediate postwar period, the debate over the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and the founding of the Atomic Energy commission.