<P> This still left the problem of getting government support for uranium research . Another friend of Szilárd's, the Austrian economist Gustav Stolper, suggested approaching Alexander Sachs, who had access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt . Sachs told Szilárd that he had already spoken to the President about uranium, but that Fermi and Pegram had reported that the prospects for building an atomic bomb were remote . He told Szilárd that he would deliver the letter, but suggested that it come from someone more prestigious . For Szilárd, Einstein was again the obvious choice . Sachs and Szilárd drafted a letter riddled with spelling errors and mailed it to Einstein . </P> <P> Szilárd set out for Long Island again on August 2 . Wigner was unavailable, so this time Szilárd co-opted another Hungarian physicist, Edward Teller, to do the driving . Einstein dictated the letter in German . On returning to Columbia University, Szilárd dictated the letter in English to a young departmental stenographer, Janet Coatesworth . She later recalled that when Szilárd mentioned extremely powerful bombs, she "was sure she was working for a nut". Ending the letter with "Yours truly, Albert Einstein" did nothing to alter this impression . Both the letter and a longer explanatory letter were then posted to Einstein . </P> <P> The letter warned that: </P> <P> "In the course of the last four months it has been made probable--through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilárd in America--that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium - like elements would be generated . Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future . </P>

Who did mr. briggs receive a letter from