We have no sense of scale for this...is it some kind of pipe?
October 21, 2014 6:14 PM Subscribe
These are amazing. Not even fifty years on, and we've lost so much information about these artifacts that were created to an extremely high degree of precision that we have no idea what they're even for anymore.
OK, let's make some guesses.
I'm betting these pipes are for cooling some chemically neutral but superheated fluid that's passing through them. The title says "Current entering the BEBC room", and this paper suggests that the BEBC room played some part in a high-voltage (300eV - is that a lot? Could be...) particle experiment. Participating scientists are listed as "J.V. Allaby, G. Barbiellini, W. Beusch, G. Brianti, I. Butterworth, J. Drees , P. Falk-Vaïrant (president), D.E. Fries , G. Giacomelli, F. Jacquet, E. Lillethun, I. Manelli, C. Michael, P.G. Murphy, C. Rubbia, P. Sôding, M. Steuer, J.P. Stroot, J.J. Thresher, D. Treille, R. Turlay, R.T. Van de Walle, H. Wachsmut and E.J.N Wilson." so that should give researchers something to start with.
posted by mhoye at 6:52 PM on October 21, 2014
OK, let's make some guesses.
I'm betting these pipes are for cooling some chemically neutral but superheated fluid that's passing through them. The title says "Current entering the BEBC room", and this paper suggests that the BEBC room played some part in a high-voltage (300eV - is that a lot? Could be...) particle experiment. Participating scientists are listed as "J.V. Allaby, G. Barbiellini, W. Beusch, G. Brianti, I. Butterworth, J. Drees , P. Falk-Vaïrant (president), D.E. Fries , G. Giacomelli, F. Jacquet, E. Lillethun, I. Manelli, C. Michael, P.G. Murphy, C. Rubbia, P. Sôding, M. Steuer, J.P. Stroot, J.J. Thresher, D. Treille, R. Turlay, R.T. Van de Walle, H. Wachsmut and E.J.N Wilson." so that should give researchers something to start with.
posted by mhoye at 6:52 PM on October 21, 2014
I wonder if there's a physics equivalent of the Oberwolfach Photo Collection because that's where I'd start looking for an unidentified mathematician of the latter half of the 20th century. (Before that, it's probably that picture from that one conference at Princeton that has everyone ever in it and can be found in any number of math department libraries.)
I'm a little surprised they have to appeal to the newsletter and not That One Person Who Photographs and Remembers Everything, but I suppose an awful lot of people have passed through CERN.
posted by hoyland at 7:03 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm a little surprised they have to appeal to the newsletter and not That One Person Who Photographs and Remembers Everything, but I suppose an awful lot of people have passed through CERN.
posted by hoyland at 7:03 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Not even fifty years on, and we've lost so much information about these artifacts that were created to an extremely high degree of precision that we have no idea what they're even for anymore.
Yeah, I am not shocked at all by this. I worked in a very similar facility, and the storage cabinets are packed full of precision-machined crap that one guy decided he wanted for something once, never used, and chucked in a corner for the next three decades. That said, if I wanted to know what stuff was, the extremely cranky senior draftsman/engineer was usually a good bet. Surely there's an equivalent person at CERN.
posted by dorque at 7:05 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I am not shocked at all by this. I worked in a very similar facility, and the storage cabinets are packed full of precision-machined crap that one guy decided he wanted for something once, never used, and chucked in a corner for the next three decades. That said, if I wanted to know what stuff was, the extremely cranky senior draftsman/engineer was usually a good bet. Surely there's an equivalent person at CERN.
posted by dorque at 7:05 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
The "pipe" looks like it might be a flanged section of jacketed piping (for liquid helium?), judging by the inside pipe diameter compared to the outside diameter (where the "fins" are). In the annular space could be vacuum for insulation. Based on flange thickness, it wouldn't be for high pressure.
posted by PixelPiper at 7:10 PM on October 21, 2014
posted by PixelPiper at 7:10 PM on October 21, 2014
That wire weaving device for a "chambre a etincelles" (chamber of sparks? spark chamber?) is fantastic. That was a great time. Love these pics.
posted by carping demon at 7:12 PM on October 21, 2014
posted by carping demon at 7:12 PM on October 21, 2014
On reflection, I think that came out more dismissive than I meant. What I'm trying to say is that most people don't realize how much of this stuff is custom-made; oftentimes for a facility like CERN, especially 30-40-50 years ago, there is no one commercially making the thing you want, so you get it drafted and machined in-house. Practically everything is a one-off. Nowadays the drawings are probably in a CAD vault, but for a lot of stuff, it could be one person's sketch on crappy graph paper.
For a lot of the stuff, there's a pretty obvious general application (like the heat-dissipating pipes), but the specifics are so potentially random. I haven't been gone long, but I guarantee there is stuff like this from my PhD work in a cabinet somewhere that some poor person is going to be very confused by a decade from now, and no one will know exactly what it's for anymore even if its overall purpose is clear.
posted by dorque at 7:13 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
For a lot of the stuff, there's a pretty obvious general application (like the heat-dissipating pipes), but the specifics are so potentially random. I haven't been gone long, but I guarantee there is stuff like this from my PhD work in a cabinet somewhere that some poor person is going to be very confused by a decade from now, and no one will know exactly what it's for anymore even if its overall purpose is clear.
posted by dorque at 7:13 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Since the OP says they are trying to croudsource this "in the CERN community," I think they know this stuff is one-off and are hoping that some researcher emeritus will pipe up and say, "Oh, yes, we made those reference shapes for Project Killingsham!"
The rest of us can speculate.
posted by muddgirl at 7:34 PM on October 21, 2014
The rest of us can speculate.
posted by muddgirl at 7:34 PM on October 21, 2014
Huh. An ex's dad was a physicist at CERN before he retired. Should pass this on.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:38 PM on October 21, 2014
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:38 PM on October 21, 2014
That's not a pipe.
It's an image of a pipe.
posted by jefflowrey at 8:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]
It's an image of a pipe.
posted by jefflowrey at 8:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]
I think they know this stuff is one-off and are hoping that some researcher emeritus will pipe up
Oh yeah, absolutely. Sorry; I'm mostly rambling because I miss the accelerator I worked at, which definitely has a "skunkworks" kind of culture and where we used to laugh/facepalm at the DOE facilities because we felt like they preferred to buy things off-the-shelf even if it meant they had to combine them in weird ways, as opposed to just making the right thing in the first place. So seeing CERN's collection of wacky things makes me nostalgic.
posted by dorque at 8:20 PM on October 21, 2014
Oh yeah, absolutely. Sorry; I'm mostly rambling because I miss the accelerator I worked at, which definitely has a "skunkworks" kind of culture and where we used to laugh/facepalm at the DOE facilities because we felt like they preferred to buy things off-the-shelf even if it meant they had to combine them in weird ways, as opposed to just making the right thing in the first place. So seeing CERN's collection of wacky things makes me nostalgic.
posted by dorque at 8:20 PM on October 21, 2014
I spotted the armature pretty quickly , but it looks like some serious arcing went on between several of the windings , I say its buggered.
posted by boilermonster at 11:18 PM on October 21, 2014
posted by boilermonster at 11:18 PM on October 21, 2014
in the summer of 92 I worked at the Cdn federal mining technology lab, and they still had a full on machine shop and glassblowing services and a carpenter. Even as a student I was able to wangle my way into some pretty interesting custom gear (for bench testing ore properties). As described elsewhere, the pilot mill and miniworks areas were CHOCK FULL of random bits of stuff from 30-40 years ago, and one or two old techs who could tell you exactly what it was made for and why. The young guys had no idea and a lot of them were, in my view, sadly incurious.
The smartest thing I did apparently was to work on a crossword puzzle with the glassblower over lunch one day (didn't even know who he was then); apparently that got me to jump the line and got some custom work done on a very fast time line.
Speaking of the old vs young techs: I could go to Dave, who'd been there since the earth cooled, and say "I'm looking for kind of a flooblenizer, except brass and lefthanded" and he'd go "Ah, shit, I don't know, man, dammit, all right let's go for a walk" and we'd wander through the works area, through doors I'd never seen open and cabinets opened with a huge keyring, through areas with radiation warning signs(!), blast doors, rappel down the side of a building etc and he'd eventually thrust his hand into a crate and what I wanted, less some minor mods, would pop out covered in dust. He'd hand it to me and go for coffee. One time we got separated and I wandered around lost for half an hour in a part of the buildings I was never able to find again.
By contrast, if I went to the new young guy and wanted a hammer, I'd need triplicate forms signed by my 2-up and a one day wait in stores.
posted by hearthpig at 6:45 AM on October 22, 2014 [8 favorites]
The smartest thing I did apparently was to work on a crossword puzzle with the glassblower over lunch one day (didn't even know who he was then); apparently that got me to jump the line and got some custom work done on a very fast time line.
Speaking of the old vs young techs: I could go to Dave, who'd been there since the earth cooled, and say "I'm looking for kind of a flooblenizer, except brass and lefthanded" and he'd go "Ah, shit, I don't know, man, dammit, all right let's go for a walk" and we'd wander through the works area, through doors I'd never seen open and cabinets opened with a huge keyring, through areas with radiation warning signs(!), blast doors, rappel down the side of a building etc and he'd eventually thrust his hand into a crate and what I wanted, less some minor mods, would pop out covered in dust. He'd hand it to me and go for coffee. One time we got separated and I wandered around lost for half an hour in a part of the buildings I was never able to find again.
By contrast, if I went to the new young guy and wanted a hammer, I'd need triplicate forms signed by my 2-up and a one day wait in stores.
posted by hearthpig at 6:45 AM on October 22, 2014 [8 favorites]
I love this post. Thanks!
One time we got separated and I wandered around lost for half an hour in a part of the buildings I was never able to find again.
It really sounds like you were walked around the engineers' version of L-space.
posted by metaBugs at 6:57 AM on October 22, 2014
One time we got separated and I wandered around lost for half an hour in a part of the buildings I was never able to find again.
It really sounds like you were walked around the engineers' version of L-space.
posted by metaBugs at 6:57 AM on October 22, 2014
"A clamp of some kind" would make a good metafilter username.
posted by chavenet at 4:08 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 4:08 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
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