Fermilab Industrial Affiliates to Hold First Annual Meeting
Fermilab Industrial Affiliates (FIA) will hold its First Annual Meeting and Symposium on Technology Transfer, May 27 and 28 at the Laboratory.
The Industrial Affiliates consists of a group of companies, large and small, that participate in this new program. It was inaugurated by the Universities Research Association Board of Trustees in 1980 "to enhance the transfer to industry of the high technology developed by Fermilab in the course of its research program," said Leon Lederman, Fermilab ยท director. "The program was also a way to encourage wide use of the technology developed at Fermilab for the ultimate benefit of the public, which provided funding support."
In inviting the affiliates to participate in this first annual meeting and symposium Lederman said, "we plan to present to you a sampling of the various technological developments that are going on in this Laboratory and among our university-based users Our basic research mission is made possible by public funding. Our technological advances are byproducts of the research, and to the extent that U.S. industry can apply any of this, we speed up repayment of the public's investment."
John McCook of the Director's Office is coordinating the FIA and the symposium. The first day will be primarily devoted to informal meetings, a welcome by Lederman and a tour of Wilson Hall and the Accelerator.
That evening after dinner, Dr. James E. Leiss will speak. He is the Associate Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Department of Energy.
The next morning, May 28, a number of Fermilab scientists will give technical presentations. Then that afternoon, representatives from the affiliates will tour the Central Helium Liquefier Facility, magnet assembly and test facilities as well as the superconducting magnet facility and various experimental laboratories including the 15-foot bubble chamber.
Giving technical talks the morning of May 28 are Alvin Tollestrup, superconductivity; Bill Fowler, cryogenics; Al Brenner, data processing; William Sippach, hardware processors; Dixon Bogert, computer controls; Tom Droege, fast pulsed-electronics; Phil Livdahl, ion beams and sources; Gerry Tool, computer-aided design; Quentin Kerns, high power radiofrequencies; Peter Limon, Cryogenic vacuum techniques; and Tom Nash, particle detectors.
Who are the Industrial Affiliates?
Members of the Industrial Affiliates include Bell Laboratories, Caterpillar Tractor Company, Chicago Bridge and Iron Company, Combustion Engineering Inc., Commonwealth Edison, Deere and Company, Digital Pathways, Inc., General Electric Corporation, The Harshaw Chemical Company, International Business Machines, International Harvester, Kinetic Systems Corporation, Lester B. Knight and Associates Inc., Litton Industries, McGraw-Edison, Nalco Chemical Company, New England Nuclear, Nuclear Data Inc., Raychem Corporation, Sargent-Welsh Scientific Company, Shell Development Company, Standard Oil Company of Indiana, State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, Texaco Inc., and Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
Impressive Examples of Technology
Impressive accomplishments highlight the technology transfer from Fermilab to industry.
In superconductivity, for example, the intensive research and development by particle physics laboratories in the late 60's and early 70's had a profound influence on the young superconducting alloy industry. Fermilab was responsible for one of the greatest technology transfers to industry when the Laboratory made the decision to push ahead with its Energy Saver. Subsequently, companies such as Teledyne Wah Chang Magnetic Corporation of America, Intermagnetics General Corporation, New England Electric and AirCo developed improved superconducting alloys, wire and cable.
For almost 10 years, Fermilab has worked closely with Lecroy Research Systems and other electronics industries in developing fast electronics and data acquisition. Out of this collaboration has come new modules and systems that have become standards throughout the world. These include the series of fast logic modules developed in the 70's and a data sparsifying, high density, precision analog-to-digital converter completed in 1979. More recently, however, the Laboratory can point to its in-house development of a sophisticated, extremely high speed emitter couple logic trigger processing system that has influenced and encouraged the first commercial marketing of some of its elements by Lecroy.
When it comes to the area of industrial controls, Fermilab is quite proud of the development of the World's largest standardized control system using the international CAMAC standard. This powerful advancement helped spawn several small new companies in the field. One is Kinetic Systems Inc . CAMACS, which are now used routinely by such industrial giants as General Motors, Alcoa, Westinghouse, General Electric, Corning Glass and Inland Steel, as well as by a number of other companies in the Fortune 500 group, got their primary impetus from Fermilab's massive system.
In cooperation with the U. S. Bureau of Standards, a new and quite sophisticated distributed processing system is being developed here and at similar research laboratories. This standard, called FASTBUS, is needed to meet the high speed data acquisition and parallel processing requirements in the high energy physics experiments that will be conducted during this and the next decade.
Fermilab's work in cryogenics has had a considerable impact on the country's industrial capability in this fast advancing field. The Laboratory required expansion engines, screw compressors, turbo molecular vacuum pumps and cryogenic controls and instrumentation as part of its new superconducting accelerator, now being constructed. The new Central Helium Liquefaction Facility on site doubles the world's capacity to produce liquid helium. By working hand-in-hand with Fermilab, industry has gained appreciable knowledge in the field of cryogenics.