CERN's Proton Synchrotron reaches 40

24 November 1999



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At 19.35 on the evening of 24 November 1959, the log book for the Proton Synchrotron (PS) at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, recorded an "historic moment", as the machine reached an energy of 24 GeV (giga electron volts), and became the world's highest energy particle accelerator of the time. The following morning, John Adams, the British engineer who had done so much to make this achievement possible announced the success in the auditorium at CERN. This image shows Adams addressing the audience, with a vodka bottle in his hands. The vodka had been sent by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, near Moscow, for drinking once CERN had broken Dubna's record of 10 GeV. The bottle was by now empty of vodka, but contained a polaroid photograph showing the 24 GeV pulse in the machine, ready to be sent back to the Russians. The PS continues to this day to play a key role as an injector to CERN's bigger accelerators.

Credit: CERN Photo