Atomic fountain development at U.S.N.O

Atomic fountain clocks are showing great promise as primary frequency standards. In light of this, we have started a program to develop atomic fountain clocks at the U. S. Naval Observatory. The mission of the observatory, however, dictates different design goals than that of a standards institution. In this paper we discuss the goals of our atomic fountain project, a scheme for reducing the overall temperature sensitivity of the fountain, and the status of our efforts to launch atoms from a four beam optical lattice.