University Builds Home for New Cyclotron

Sometime this spring shiny segments of a new University atom-smasher will begin to arrive at what was once a vacant plot of Oxford and Everett streets, where a three-foot thick concrete foundation for the elephantine cyclotron is now reaching completion.

Although this brain-child of the University Committee on Research and Nuclear Physics may not be assembled for several months, and though details on voltage, tonnage, and other by-words of modern technology are not yet ready for public consumption, workmen north of the Yard are readying the cyclotron base and accompanying research building for the day when the massive maguets begin to rip apart atoms.

Harvard's first cyclotron, built in 1958 and housed in the old Gordon McKay Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering, was requisitioned during the war for Army research purposes. The new machine will embody improvements over the old model, and will have the enlarged facilities that such a project requires.

Current cold spells have frozen cement-pouring operations, a superintendent for contractors McCreery and Theriault complained, but after a little radio-activity from the sun thaws out construction work, the one-story housing for the cyclotron will go up.

Walls of glass brick will throw some light on the highly-charged subject. Among the up-to-date equipment that will speed up the workings of the new giant is a huge travelling crane, installed under the roof, that will help to handle the ponderous atom-smashing apparatus.

A lack of essential building materials has delayed construction of the companion research building, but the "brains" for the cyclotron now has a concrete roof over its head, and all the floors and partitions have been installed.

The two-story red brick control building is linked to the cyclotron by a narrow corridor, carrying electrical conduits, ventilating paraphenalia, and other connecting fibers that will put life into the atom-smasher.

First-floor facilities in the research building will include a control center, electronic laboratory, general office, machine shop, and storage space. Five research rooms, a chemical laboratory, and more space for office work and drafting will make up the top floor. Down in the basement will go showers, locker rooms, air-conditioning equipment, a photographic darkroom, electric generators, and more space for storage or laboratories