From Desire to Data: How JLab’s Experimental Program Evolved Part 2: The Painstaking Transition to Concrete Plans, Mid-1980s to 1990

This is the second in a three-part article describing the development of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility’s experimental program, from the first dreams of incisive electromagnetic probes into the structure of the nucleus through the era in which equipment was designed and constructed and a program crafted so that the long-desired experiments could begin. These developments unfolded against the backdrop of the rise of the more bureaucratic New Big Science and the intellectual tumult that grew from increasing understanding and interest in quark-level physics. Part 2, presented here, focuses on the period from 1986 to 1990. During this period of revolutionary change, laboratory personnel, potential users, and DOE officials labored to proceed from the 1986 laboratory design report, which included detailed accelerator plans and very preliminary experimental equipment sketches, to an approved 1990 experimental equipment conceptual design report, which provided designs complete enough for the onset of experimental equipment construction.