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PS and LEP: a walk down memory lane

30 October 2009

Photos from the family album highlight the big events of 1959 and 1989.

CCann1_09_09 — CERN in April 1959 with the Proton Synchrotron (PS) to the right.

CCann2_09_09 — The first magnets installed in the PS some eight months before start-up.

CCann3_09_09 — John Adams in the main auditorium on 25 November. In his hands is the vodka bottle that he had received from Dubna with the message that it was to be drunk when CERN passed the Synchrophasotron’s world-record energy of 10 GeV. The bottle (empty!) was ready to be sent back to Dubna with a Polaroid photograph of the 25 GeV pulse.

CCann4_09_09 — Brigitte Laurent pins up the messages of congratulations that CERN received from the whole world upon the successful operation of the PS.

CCann5_09_09 — A view of the ALEPH detector in May 1989 with its massive segmented hadron calorimeter clearly visible.

CCann6_09_09 — A feature of the L3 experiment was its huge magnet (red), with much of the detector located within its coils.

CCann7_09_09 — The barrel sections of the OPAL detector are installed in April 1989.

CCann8_09_09 — The time-projection chamber is inserted into the DELPHI experiment in April 1989.

CCann9_09_09 — One of LEP’s first Z⁰s, caught in the OPAL detector on 18 August 1989 during the pilot physics run. It decays to a quark–antiquark pair, creating two jets.

CCann10_09_09 — The decay of a Z⁰ into a pair of hadron jets in the ALEPH detector, recorded in December 1989. By then each detector had amassed around 30,000 Z⁰s.

CCann11_09_09 — The DELPHI detector in December 1989 displays two hadron jets from the decay of a Z⁰ to a quark–antiquark pair together with two isolated muons.

CCann12_09_09 — The decay of Z⁰ to three jets in L3, in April 1990. In this case the Z⁰ decays into a quark and antiquark, one of which emits a gluon, creating a third jet.

CCann13_09_09 — Emilio Picasso, LEP project leader, addresses the representatives from CERN’s member states at the inauguration ceremony of LEP on 13 November 1989, three months after first collisions.

CCann14_09_09 — Six months to go: inside the LEP tunnel in January 1989. At this stage the other parts of the ring were still far from complete.

CCann15_09_09 — Heads of state at the inauguration. From the left, Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, King Carl Gustav of Sweden, CERN Council President Josef Rembser, President Francois Mitterand of France, President Jean-Pascal Delamuraz of Switzerland, Carlo Rubbia, director-general of CERN.

CCann16_09_09 — The signatures of the dignitaries who represented CERN’s 14 member states at the time of the inauguration of LEP.

CCann17_09_09 — During the inauguration, Heinz Riesenhuber, minister of research and technology, Federal Republic of Germany, visits the LEP tunnel.

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