Ags begins operation at brookhaven laboratory

Commissioner J. S. Graham, acting chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), announced that the alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, one of the world´s two largest operating particle accelerators, ran for the first time July 29, 1960, producing at 4:15 p.m. a beam of protons at an energy of more than 30 billion electron volts (bev). This is the highest energy ever attained by a particle accelerator. Before reaching this energy, the AGS had run for about an hour at 24 bev.