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Title: Do you want to build such a machine? : Designing a high energy proton accelerator for Argonne National Laboratory.

Abstract

Argonne National Laboratory's efforts toward researching, proposing and then building a high-energy proton accelerator have been discussed in a handful of studies. In the main, these have concentrated on the intense maneuvering amongst politicians, universities, government agencies, outside corporations, and laboratory officials to obtain (or block) approval and/or funds or to establish who would have control over budgets and research programs. These ''top-down'' studies are very important but they can also serve to divorce such proceedings from the individuals actually involved in the ground-level research which physically served to create theories, designs, machines, and experiments. This can lead to a skewed picture, on the one hand, of a lack of effect that so-called scientific and technological factors exert and, on the other hand, of the apparent separation of the so-called social or political from the concrete practice of doing physics. An exception to this approach can be found in the proceedings of a conference on ''History of the ZGS'' held at Argonne at the time of the Zero Gradient Synchrotron's decommissioning in 1979. These accounts insert the individuals quite literally as they are, for the most part, personal reminiscences of those who took part in these efforts on the groundmore » level. As such, they are invaluable raw material for historical inquiry but generally lack the rigor and perspective expected in a finished historical work. The session on ''Constructing Cold War Physics'' at the 2002 annual History of Science Society Meeting served to highlight new approaches circulating towards history of science and technology in the post-WWII period, especially in the 1950s. There is new attention towards the effects of training large numbers of scientists and engineers as well as the caution not to equate ''national security'' with military preparedness, but rather more broadly--at certain points--with the explicit ''struggle for the hearts and minds of men.'' There is a call for greater detail in periodization as events such as Stalin's death and Khruschev's subsequent speech, the end of the Korean conflict, the hydrogen bomb test, Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative, the 1955 Geneva conference, and Sputnik each served to drastically change the landscape in the United States. Furthermore, Harvard University Press recently published the first detailed and scholarly account of a history of the national laboratories; the work argues that the ''systemicity'' of the organization must be considered as a necessary piece when examining any of the myriad of related puzzles.« less

Authors:
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Argonne National Lab., IL (US)
Sponsoring Org.:
US Department of Energy (US)
OSTI Identifier:
823334
Report Number(s):
ANL/HIST-2
TRN: US0401689
DOE Contract Number:  
W-31-109-ENG-38
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: 5 Apr 2004
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS; ACCELERATORS; ANL; CONCRETES; DECOMMISSIONING; ENGINEERS; GROUND LEVEL; PHYSICS; PROTONS; RAW MATERIALS; RESEARCH PROGRAMS

Citation Formats

Paris, E. Do you want to build such a machine? : Designing a high energy proton accelerator for Argonne National Laboratory.. United States: N. p., 2004. Web. doi:10.2172/823334.
Paris, E. Do you want to build such a machine? : Designing a high energy proton accelerator for Argonne National Laboratory.. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/823334
Paris, E. 2004. "Do you want to build such a machine? : Designing a high energy proton accelerator for Argonne National Laboratory.". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/823334. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/823334.
@article{osti_823334,
title = {Do you want to build such a machine? : Designing a high energy proton accelerator for Argonne National Laboratory.},
author = {Paris, E},
abstractNote = {Argonne National Laboratory's efforts toward researching, proposing and then building a high-energy proton accelerator have been discussed in a handful of studies. In the main, these have concentrated on the intense maneuvering amongst politicians, universities, government agencies, outside corporations, and laboratory officials to obtain (or block) approval and/or funds or to establish who would have control over budgets and research programs. These ''top-down'' studies are very important but they can also serve to divorce such proceedings from the individuals actually involved in the ground-level research which physically served to create theories, designs, machines, and experiments. This can lead to a skewed picture, on the one hand, of a lack of effect that so-called scientific and technological factors exert and, on the other hand, of the apparent separation of the so-called social or political from the concrete practice of doing physics. An exception to this approach can be found in the proceedings of a conference on ''History of the ZGS'' held at Argonne at the time of the Zero Gradient Synchrotron's decommissioning in 1979. These accounts insert the individuals quite literally as they are, for the most part, personal reminiscences of those who took part in these efforts on the ground level. As such, they are invaluable raw material for historical inquiry but generally lack the rigor and perspective expected in a finished historical work. The session on ''Constructing Cold War Physics'' at the 2002 annual History of Science Society Meeting served to highlight new approaches circulating towards history of science and technology in the post-WWII period, especially in the 1950s. There is new attention towards the effects of training large numbers of scientists and engineers as well as the caution not to equate ''national security'' with military preparedness, but rather more broadly--at certain points--with the explicit ''struggle for the hearts and minds of men.'' There is a call for greater detail in periodization as events such as Stalin's death and Khruschev's subsequent speech, the end of the Korean conflict, the hydrogen bomb test, Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative, the 1955 Geneva conference, and Sputnik each served to drastically change the landscape in the United States. Furthermore, Harvard University Press recently published the first detailed and scholarly account of a history of the national laboratories; the work argues that the ''systemicity'' of the organization must be considered as a necessary piece when examining any of the myriad of related puzzles.},
doi = {10.2172/823334},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/823334}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Apr 05 00:00:00 EDT 2004},
month = {Mon Apr 05 00:00:00 EDT 2004}
}