4.
Processing Photographs
In
1955, a few years after the invention of the first bubble
chamber, Otto Frisch spent a few weeks at Ann Arbor,
Michigan. Frisch was there to discuss new ideas on the
strong focussing of electrons, as the Cavendish had
hopes to build a new kind of accelerator.
Although
the new Cavendish accelerator was never built, Frisch's
visit to America was far from wasted. He had met Donald
Glaser, the inventor of the bubble chamber. Glaser had
told Frisch that the early design had been improved
and that the bubble chamber was now a practical instrument,
allowing the tracks from high-energy collisions to be
photographed once a second or faster.
In
fact, the bubble chamber could produce track photographs
so quickly that a 'frightful bottleneck' would develop
if the tracks were measured by hand, a process that
took nearly an hour per photograph. Glaser and Frisch
understood that some semi-automatic measuring equipment
was needed to cope with these large numbers of photographs.
Next
Page
|
