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That's a neat little tidbit on the Westinghouse Atom Smasher. Originally built in 1937 this is really one of the first particle accelerators as it uses a 5 million volt Van de Graff to bombard elements with high energy particles. It's a straight assembly with requires a ton of power to make it work as advertised (hence the big Van de Graff). In Berkley Ernst Lawrence built a device which uses a different approach to accelerating particles using magnetism perpendicular to an alternating current. This he first built in 1931 and was called the cyclotron.

Last July's issue of Popular Mechanics has a very interesting article on the atom smasher. It also goes into Lawrence's cyclotron as well as the use of the mass spectrometer to separate isotopes of uranium. Eventually these last two items will be wedded to make the calutron which will be used to enrich uranium. I also like the mention at the end of this article of the potentially large explosive weapon that could be created by "exploding" uranium 235. Seems like the potential to make a game changing weapon by splitting the atom was pretty much public knowledge in 1940.