COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 51

A VISIT TO THE BROOKHAVEN ATOMIC LABS
Sometimes I was involved in projects at RCA, where I had just no idea what they were trying to do. One time three or four of us went to the Atomic Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory far out on Long Island. They had a cyclotron (which can generate several tens of millions of electron volts), that directed atoms into a “bubble chamber,” with walls a couple of feet thick. What on earth that meant, and what the computer was supposed to do with that, I had no idea. Something about analyzing the “scratches” on a photo of what happened when the atomic particle smashed into whatever it smashed into, inside what was called a "Bubble Chamber."

The other fellows in the group were supposed to have some idea what that was all about, I was supposed to determine if our computer could do whatever that job happened to be. As it turns out, for whatever reason, we didn’t pursue the job, so I never needed to really find out.

While we were being given a tour of the facility, at one place someone came running in and said we shouldn’t be in the cyclotron, as it was still “hot” with radiation. More or less as a joke he added, “You could be sterilized.” One of the men with me, the father of seven, said, “I should have come here years ago.”