had to resist corrosion from uranium hexafluoride. The latter criterion suggested a nickel barrier. Foster C. Nix at the Bell Telephone Laboratories experimented with nickel powder, while Edward O. Norris at the C. O. Jelliff Manufacturing Corporation and Edward Adler at the City College of New York worked on a design with electroplated metallic nickel. Norris was an English interior decorator, who had developed a very fine metal mesh for use with a spray gun. Their design appeared too brittle and fragile for the proposed use, particularly on the higher stages of enrichment, but there was hope that this could be overcome. In 1943, Urey brought in Hugh S. Taylor from Princeton University to look at the problem of a usable barrier. Libby made progress on understanding the chemistry of uranium hexafluoride, leading to ideas on how to prevent corrosion and plugging. Chemical researchers at the SAM Laboratories studied fluorocarbons, which resisted corrosion, and could be used as lubricants and coolants in the gaseous diffusion plant. Despite this progress, the K-25 Project was in serious trouble without a suitable barrier, and by August 1943 it was facing cancellation. On 13 August Groves informed the Military Policy Committee, the senior committee that steered the Manhattan Project, that gaseous diffusion enrichment in excess of fifty percent was probably infeasible, and the gaseous diffusion plant would be limited to producing product with a lower enrichment which could be fed into the calutrons of the Y-12 electromagnetic plant. Urey therefore began preparations to mass-produce the Norris-Adler barrier, despite its problems. Meanwhile, Union Carbide and Kellex had made researchers at the Bakelite Corporation, a subsidiary of Union Carbide, aware of Nix's unsuccessful efforts with powdered nickel barriers. To Frazier Groff and other researchers at Bakelite's laboratories in Bound Brook, New Jersey, it seemed that Nix was not taking advantage of the latest techniques, and they began their own development efforts. Both Bell and Bound Brook sent samples of their powdered nickel barriers to Taylor for evaluation, but he was unimpressed; neither had come up with a practical barrier. At Kellogg's laboratory in Jersey City, New Jersey, Clarence A. Johnson, who was aware of the steps taken by the SAM Laboratories to improve the Norris-Adler barrier, realized that they could also be taken with the Bakelite barrier. The result was a barrier better than either, although still short of what was required. At a meeting at