SLAC Blue Book

The Stanford Two-Mile Accelerator, "The Blue Book"

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The year was 1967, "the Two-Mile Accelerator had already been completed on schedule and within the planned budget, and the machine had already begun to supply beams for the earliest research programs... Before a regularly scheduled Director's meeting someone mentioned that the completion of the accelerator and its successful operations would probably mean that various key members of the laboratory would now be leaving SLAC and moving on to greener pastures and new challenges. This rather casual remark opened a torrent of concerns and responses among those present. The regular agenda was temporarily set aside as more people joined in this discussion. The gist of the concerns was: "With the departure of those key individuals from SLAC, won’t a great deal of intellectual knowledge and experience associated with the design and construction of the Two-Mile Accelerator be lost, a loss that would require years and great expense to replace? What can be done to prevent this from happening?

...Various ideas were tossed around, some of them sound, others trivial. Finally Matt Sands, who was Deputy Director of SLAC at that time and who had been relatively quiet up to then, spoke up and said (in effect) "Why don’t we publish a book about the various components and systems of SLAC and the experiences gained in producing them? Then various people may leave SLAC but they will leave their accumulated theoretical and technical contributions behind. The book will serve to present and coordinate all of the information better than a hodgepodge of miscellaneous reports could achieve." I was immediately impressed with this advice and quickly supported Matt’s suggestion. After further discussion by those present, it was agreed that his suggestion had great merit and should be adopted. Panofsky approved."

R.B. Neal, General Editor, 1968  Associate Director of SLAC, 1960-1982