14 



member states but some material had to be purchased in the United States, such 

 as some computers and special electronics. The principles of the or^jauization were 

 to request bids from member state industries and to accept the best and lowest 

 offer, without any effort to divide the contracts evenly among the member states. 

 Only when the items were unavailable in Western Europe were purchases made in 

 non-member countries. 



During the construction period, a 13th state, Spain, joined the organization. 

 Spain withdrew around 1970 because of financial difficulties and rejoiued in 1984. 



This is perhaps the place to mention another international laboratory' organized 

 by the Communist countries at about the same time. Perhaps it was an answer 

 to the rejected offer extended to the East European countries - not the Soviet 

 Union - to join CERX. It is located iu Dubua north of Moscow and also contains 

 a larger and a smaller accelerator. In contrast to CERX they did not switch to 

 the new "strong focusing" method. This is why their major accelerator was not 

 very successful. Dubua's member states included, of course, the Soviet Union, 

 who played the dominant role, whereas in CERX no member state has a dominant 

 position. 



The small synchro-cyclotron was operated for the first time iu 1958 and the 

 large accelerator had its first circulating beam on November 29, 1959, a major 

 triumph of European engineering. At that time it was the largest accelerator in 

 the world, although the Brookhaven "Alternating Gradient Synchrotron" (AGS) of 

 equal size was already under construction and was completed a year or two later. 



Actual research started with the small machine in 1958. An important result 



