In the fall of 1962 at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, a remarkable event took place. A highly complex elastic‐scattering experiment involving high‐energy protons and pions scattered by a hydrogen target was investigated by a system of several hundred scintillation‐counter hodoscopes covering a large fraction of the solid angle in the investigated angular region. The system was all in fast (a few to 30 nsec) coincidence with complicated‐logic trigger requirements, and it automatically trigger‐selected, compiled, stored, and finally transmitted the data to an on‐line computer. The computer then processed the data automatically and rapidly in real time according to a carefully pre‐programmed analysis, stored the desired results in suitable bins, and transmitted the program‐requested data displays back to the display scopes of the experimental group. Desired physical answers based on cumulative statistics (such as computed cross sections, errors, background values and distribution, displays of counter‐efficiency uniformity, etc.) were also available in detailed print‐out tabular (or, if desired, graphical) form, upon initiation by the experimenters of a simple output routine.
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April 1965
April 01 1965
The on‐line computer counter and digitalized spark‐chamber technique
Dr. Lindenbaum describes a particle‐physics experiment performed last year at Brookhaven National Laboratory in which one and a half million events per hour were analyzed with an on‐line computer while the experiment was in progress. The author, a senior physicist at Brookhaven, believes that similar on‐line computer‐counter techniques might usefully be applied to other types of physics experiments.
S. J. Lindenbaum
S. J. Lindenbaum
Brookhaven National Laboratory
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Physics Today 18 (4), 19–28 (1965);
Citation
S. J. Lindenbaum; The on‐line computer counter and digitalized spark‐chamber technique. Physics Today 1 April 1965; 18 (4): 19–28. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3047330
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