The use of minicomputers in particle accelerators

A substantial number of the world's research laborstories in low-, medium-, and high-energy physics have been among the earliest users of minicomputer data acquisition and control systems. A decade ago, the commercially available minicomputers were put to use gathering data from physics experiments using particle beams from accelerators. As early as 1965, engineers and physicists at several North American accelerator laboratories were installing minicomputer-based control systems for the purpose of automating particle-beam transport lines. Since that time, the use of minicomputers for special instrumentation, data acquisition, and supervisory control has mushroomed throughout the accelerator world. The application of minicomputers to the accelerator beam diagnostics, experimental interface development, accelerator structure tuning, magnet field mapping, ion source operation, nuclear instrumentation, and data handling as practiced at LAMPF and other accelerator laboratories throughout the world will be related in this paper.