few days before the November 4 holding of the United States presidential election, 1952. Truman wanted to keep the thermonuclear test away from partisan politics but had no desire to order a postponement of it himself; however he did make it known that he would be fine if it was delayed past the election due to "technical reasons" being found. Atomic Energy Commission member Eugene M. Zuckert was sent to the Enewetak test site to see if such a reason could be found, but weather considerations – on average there were only a handful of days each month that were suitable for the test – indicated it should go ahead as planned, and in the end no schedule delay took place. Device design and preparations The "Mike" device was essentially a building that resembled a factory rather than a weapon. It has been reported that Soviet engineers derisively referred to "Mike" as a "thermonuclear installation". The device was designed by Richard Garwin, a student of Enrico Fermi, on the suggestion of Edward Teller. It had been decided that nothing other than a full-scale test would validate the idea of the Teller-Ulam design. Garwin was instructed to use very conservative estimates when designing the test, and told that it need not be small and light enough to be deployed by air. Liquid deuterium was chosen as the fuel for the fusion reaction because its use simplified the experiment from a physicist's point of view, and made the results easier to analyze. From an engineering point of view, its use necessitated the development of previously-unknown technologies to handle the difficult material, which had to be stored at extremely low temperatures, near absolute zero. A large cryogenics plant was built to produce liquid hydrogen (used for cooling the device) and deuterium (fuel for the test). A power plant was also constructed for the cryogenics facility. The device that was developed for testing the Teller-Ulam design became known as a "Sausage" design: At its center was a cylindrical insulated steel Dewar (vacuum flask) or cryostat. This tank, almost across and more than high, had walls almost thick. It weighed approximately . It was capable of holding of liquid deuterium, cooled to near-absolute zero. The cryogenic deuterium provided the fuel for the "secondary" (fusion) stage of the explosion. At one end of the cylindrical Dewar flask was a TX-5 regular fission bomb (not boosted). The