November 13, 1948 – Nine trucks leave the South Chicago works of the Youngstown
Sheet and Tube Company, carrying “monsters of steel and copper” [Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1948] to
the University of Chicago, where the components of the school’s
synchro-cyclotorn will be assembled at Fifty-Sixth Street and Ellis
Avenue. The shipment tips the scales at
300 tons with each of the 14 magnet coils, wound at the New York naval
shipyard, measuring 20 feet in diameter.
The stainless steel vacuum chamber is 18 by 17.5 feet with a depth of 26
inches. The atom smasher came together
amazingly fast . . . it was only January 13 that the university placed an order
with the Bethlehem Steel Company for the 4,140,000 magnet that would form the
heart of the machine. Above, the cyclotron structure awaits its component parts as 1948 comes to a close.
No comments:
Post a Comment