Remastered 1964 films show origins of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Can confirm - the tour of SLAC is (or was in the early 2000s) a great experience. Apart from the squirrels sitting on the klystrons, I remember a lot of great engineering and 'forward planning': For example, highway 280 was not built when they started construction - but they knew it was coming so they pre-built that bridge that runs 280 over the beamline so that future highway work would not interfere so much with their operations. And they had only just invented lasers - they knew that by the time they had finished construction they would be able use this new invention to align the tubes but they weren't quite there yet with the laser physics so they just left an empty laser calibration tube ready for when someone (machinists?) had completed that part of the engineering (hopefully!). Also I was impressed that their measurement precision is such that they can detect and compensate for the movement of the continental plate associated with the Pacific tides.

I've been passing "Fabrication of the Accelerator Structure" (the un-remastered version) around to people the last several years to show some people where I work.

Andy recently remastered these. I hadn't seen the first one before, but the second one is 100% work 42 minutes of your time. The narration is great, the topic is great, the pictures are great. Unlike current videos, it's happy to dwell on shots for more than 2 seconds, in silence, while people are actually working - instead of the pretend-working for a camera shot with dialog or futuristic music to fill the silence.

I really wish they'd have created more of these types of videos over the years, but $84k in today's dollars for a video would be a lot of EPO budget these days, in addition to 42 minutes being an eternity. It's a great documentary, and, I think, a treasure.

Shameless plug: we're starting a new computer science research group at SLAC and hiring for full time staff scientist positions.

You might think a CS research group is a little odd at a linear accelerator center, but one of the things we learned when the forefront of particle physics moved to the LHC is that we have to diversify. So SLAC's mission is a lot more broad now than it was at the time. Also, I'd make the observation that there are a lot of problems in programming languages, compilers, OSes, etc. that are a lot less solved than you might think, and because a relatively small fraction of the CS community is paying attention to scientific computing there are a lot of areas that are surprisingly underdeveloped compared to the relatively well beaten path of commercial computing.

Contact info in profile if interested.

I met a man by the name of Gerard Collet who worked at SLAC as head machinist for many years. He told me that much of the design of these things was done by the machinists in partnership with the scientists. The scientists would describe some impossibly precise thing and there would be many back and forth brainstorming sessions in which a plan would gradually emerge for something that met the requirements, and could actually be built.

He had agreed to advise me on construction of my fusion reactor prototype, but that was several years ago, and I was unable to obtain funds to proceed.

When our kid was 2, we used to drive over SLAC on 280 several times a week. We taught him to be able to answer what “the building that looks like a train” is really called. What’s cuter than a little guy squeaking “Stanford Linear Accelerator” :) Still makes us smile.

Must have been really exciting time to be particle physicist in those days. SLAC & other colliders enabled a revolution in physics, culminating in the formulation & verification of the standard model - a truly unparalleled feat of scientific progress.

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/november-2014/the-n...

For those in the area, SLAC also offers public tours:

https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/public-tours

I was lucky enough in grad school to use SLAC's beamline for diffraction studies of some muscle protein (just a rotation project). You get a little hutch that has a little port to the beam and can open/close it to expose your sample. The interlocks were really impressive (don't want people to be exposed to the beam).

The whole facility is really a holy temple of science (hushed tones, historical scientific relics in glass cases, etc) and a pinnacle of engineering.

Construction of SLAC was a big deal on the peninsula at the time. At least I was fully aware of it. I remember touring SLAC in 1968 or 69 with my elementary school class. We had no idea what it was doing beyond it being an atom smasher.

The site seems to be inaccessible over IPv6. It resolves an address but never responds. I had to load it in Tor Browser in order to actually get to the content.

Stupid question: Is there a way to "offsite archive" these?

I can't wait to watch these tonight!

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center