accelerator start-ups.

I have seen a few. The worst was the booster at CERN. Two men were supposed to have charge of the start-up of the 4 ring vertically stacked synchrotrons. They spent days and days tickling the controls, taking hundreds of photographs and copious writing in notebooks but always without success.

To get a bit of glory they invited the Director General and all the really important people to attend on a given day. It was the mixture as before...red faces...important people 4 deep in front of the equipment racks. The reason...discovered by Frank Sacherer, Ray Sherwood et al during one of the evening and late night runs, the ocurrence of resonances which were avoided by not using the values of Qv and Qh that the "experts" insisted on using every day for a month or so.

When one "expert" was lecturing the ISR people how the booster could never work with the old linac, on his return to his office he had photos of the circulating beam in each of the 4 rings on his desk.

Like another of his compatriots who could never make a mistake no mention was made of the incident but the old Qv and Qh values were abandoned for ever.

Let's hope tomorrow goes off better than that. Lyn is my friend and I wish him success and glory!