Among the first things visitors see when they enter the Lawrence Livermore National Lab Archives and Research Center are the two, work-scarred wooden desks. Lab lore has it that the near-identical old office desks belonged to Ernest Lawrence, the lab's founder, and Edward Teller, "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and lab director from 1958 to 1960.

Archivist Maxine Trost isn't so sure. The desk folks say belonged to Teller looks more like the one old photos show in Lawrence's office. Trost has asked former lab secretaries who worked for the men to make a positive ID, but the provenance remains dubious.

"The chair is definitely Teller's," said Trost, referring to the old-fashioned, wooden swivel chair in front of the Teller desk.

As the lab archivist, Trost is the keeper of the record of one of the most dramatic U.S. historical eras - the Atomic Age and what some call the golden age of physics. The lab archives, founded in 1981, tell the story of the development of nuclear energy and a galaxy of scientific research and discovery spanning the lab's 55-year history.

That archival record contains many mysteries.

"You never know what you're going to get when you open a box," she said.

Humble beginnings
Trost, who joined the lab as its first professional archivist in 2001, has her particular favorite archive item, a sheet of hotel stationery on which Herbert York wrote in longhand his plan for a second University of California nuclear laboratory. Lawrence had sent the young UC Berkeley physicist on a trip to determine if a spin-off of the Berkeley lab was really needed.

In a Chicago hotel, York sketched out what the founding of such a lab would require in manpower, down to the number of researchers with doctoral vs. bachelor's degrees that were needed. York would become the first Livermore Lab director, serving from 1952 to 1958. Rather like the three tenors, (Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras, whom most people remember only as "the other guy") in the lab triumvirate of Lawrence, Teller and York few recognize the young scientist who got the Livermore Lab off the ground. But York, who became the first chancellor of UC San Diego, proved an important influence on the lab, Trost said, and papers associated with him are significant.

Trost, who has a bachelor's degree in psychology and math from UCLA, earned a master's in history with a certificate in archival management from New York University in 1985. She began her archivist career at the NYU archives and has more than 20 years experience managing and preserving historical archives including two important collections associated with Broadway - the Billy Rose Theatre Collection in the New York Public Library and the Shubert Archive in Manhattan. Before joining the lab, Trost was curator and associate archivist for the Massachusetts State Archives. She also has taught university courses in archival management.

One of the things the makes the lab archives so different from other collections she has worked on is that only one-third of the lab materials are unclassified and open to those without security clearance. A third of the materials are classified, and another third may or may not be and awaits evaluation.

The center doesn't promote itself to the general public, and more than 80 percent of the users are lab employees. But Trost has organized film festivals showing historical documentary film material. In September, more than 600 attended a showing. She also keeps in touch with retired lab employees, carting her binder of unidentified photos to the retirees' monthly luncheons, hoping to glean more lab history and to inspire people who may have old lab materials to donate them to the archives.

Live testing cheese by cheese

During the lab's 55th anniversary celebration in September, Trost displayed some of the lab memorabilia, including the York document. The party commemorated UC's years of lab management and the transition to a new era of UC co-managing the lab with Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Washington Group and Battelle as part of Lawrence Livermore National Security.

Trost also exhibited the certificates given to lab employees who worked on early nuclear tests. These commemorative certificates are adorned with cartoon caricatures drawn by lab employees. They captured the mood of the participants, she said, and the pride lab employees felt for the work they were doing.

Back in the day of live nuclear testing, each series of tests carried a project name such as the 1974 Operation Bedrock. The person in charge of the operation had the honor of naming each "shot" in the test, and chose the names with themes such as musical instruments, ghost towns and Indian tribes. The shots in Operation Bedrock were named after exotic cheeses: Edam, Stilton and so forth.

Papers, like the logs that document the test names, make up the bulk of the 5,000 cubic feet of archival material: historical correspondence, memos, annual reports, project files, brochures, research notebooks, planning documents and all the lab newspapers from 1952 to the present.

The archive center also has a wealth of videos, films and photographic material including more than 100,000 negatives from the Nevada Test Site, the main location for three decades of U.S. nuclear weapons testing.

Then there are the mystery items. Trost keeps a collection of objects that she challenges visitors to identify - bits of machinery, samples of rock and a big chunk of mirror-smooth, nail-polish red glass that so far has defied explanation. They could be important, or not.

"I had one item out there that someone identified as part of an old espresso machine," Trost said. "I felt so dumb."

Preservation for the people

On the serious side, the archives play an important role in the present-day lab. On average the center gets 26 research requests per month.

"These records are federal resources, and they belong to the people of the United States," Trost said. "Millions of dollars are being spent on doing this research, and people have a right to expect these records to be kept."

Records of past research are an important part of the future. Lab scientists use them to get background and context for new research proposals. The old research records of the live nuclear tests are invaluable in creating the computer simulations the U.S. now uses in place of live testing. And sometimes old ideas are revived as technology advances make new discoveries possible.

"The changes between 1950 and 2000 are enormous," said Trost. "The records created at the lab document the history of this incredible science of change.... It just feels good to remember your past."