Manhattan Project by Goodyear Tire to encase the reactor. On 2 December 1942, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in an experimental reactor known as Chicago Pile-1. The point at which a reaction becomes self-sustaining became known as "going critical". Compton reported the success to Conant in Washington, D.C., by a coded phone call, saying, "The Italian navigator [Fermi] has just landed in the new world." In January 1943, Grafton's successor, Major Arthur V. Peterson, ordered Chicago Pile-1 dismantled and reassembled at Red Gate Woods, as he regarded the operation of a reactor as
Enrico Fermi High School town-wide high school enrollment of 1,500 students. Proposed use of the vacated building include moving the middle school to the Enrico Fermi location or renovating the building as a town library/community center. The Enrico Fermi name was used as the name of the new STEAM wing of the expanded and renovated Enfield High School. In 2016, Enrico Fermi High School closed, and its students attend Enfield High School. The school is named after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. A site for the school was purchased in February 1968 and a ground-breaking ceremony took place on September 14, 1968. The school opened