# The Steel Penny & WWII Shortages **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 30, 2014, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-steel-penny-wwii-shortages/699930 "2014-09-30T02:16:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-steel-penny-wwii-shortages/699930/21 "2014-09-30T17:00:33Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > There’s an anecdote about copper shortage in WW II that most of you have heard a dozen times, but I’ll repeat it for any young 'uns. > > While steel was an easy substitute in pennies, a much better conductor was needed for the electromagnets used to refine U-235 for the device eventually dropped on Hiroshima. With copper desperately needed for other military purposes the Manhattan Project decided to substitute … > > … Silver! … Taken on loan from the U.S. Treasury. > > In total almost 15,000 _tons_ of silver were used by the Project. (99.99997% of this was eventually returned to the Treasury.) > > The usual punchline is: After ordering thousands of tons of silver, the scientists were asked to convert their request to troy ounces! There’s also a story (or maybe just a tall tale) that at one time Manhattan Project engineers used “copper” as a code word for one of the radioactive materials they were working with. At some point they needed actual copper, which was then code-named “honest-to-goodness copper.” ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-steel-penny-wwii-shortages/699930/22 "2014-09-30T17:48:28Z")
The battleship _Pennsylvania_, newly refloated after Pearl Habor, got silver bus-bars in its electrical system for the same reason. Wonder if they recovered them before it was sacrificed as a target ship at Bikini. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-steel-penny-wwii-shortages/699930/23 "2014-09-30T19:03:05Z")
Wouldn’t they have also needed the copper for electronics uses such as communications wires and radar installations and such? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-steel-penny-wwii-shortages/699930.md?page=1)