The National Synchrotron Light Source, Part II:The Bakeout

This is the second part of a two-part article about the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), the first facility designed and built specifically for producing and exploiting synchrotron radiation. The NSLS,a $24-million project conceived about 1970 and officially proposed in 1976, had its groundbreaking in 1978. Its construction was a key episode in Brookhaven’s history, in the transition of synchrotron radiation from a novelty to a commodity, and in the transition of synchrotron-radiation scientists from parasitic to autonomous researchers. In this part I cover the construction of the NSLS.The story of its construction illustrates many of the tensions and risks involved in building a large scientific facility in a highly politicized environment: risking a facility’s quality by underfunding it versus asking for more funding and risking not getting it; focusing on meeting time and budget promises that risk compromising machine performance versus focusing on performance and risking cancellation; and the pros and cons of a pragmatic versus an analytic approach to commissioning. Robert P. Crease is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, and historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory.