For 40 years, these meetings have brought together users of the accelerator from around the world, offering them an opportunity to interact with and learn from each other.
The program from that first meeting shows a line-up of sessions chaired by future leaders of both Fermilab and the user community, including Norman Ramsey, chair of the advisory board that recommended what type of accelerator to build; Robert Rathburn Wilson, first director of the National Accelerator Laboratory, which later became Fermilab; and his deputy director, Ned Goldwasser. Wilson and Goldwasser used that first meeting to establish the framework for Fermilabs userfriendly principles.
Wilson took the opportunity to explain that the lab was really a national lab, Goldwasser said. Until that time, although laboratories had national in their names, they were really regional. Wilson and I wanted the users to be people who not only visited the lab, but who were involved in the design.
