LETTER: Horsham magnets

During a recent trip to CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in Geneva, my son, a lecturer in accelerator science at Oxford University, noticed that several of the magnets that are used in an experiment that he works on were made by Lintott Engineering in Horsham around 1976. Having worked for Lintott for ten years in the 1960s and again in the mid-1970s, I found this very interesting and thought that other ex-Lintott employees, some of whom would have worked on these very magnets, would also be interested.

It turns out that around 160 magnets were manufactured for CERN by Lintott in the 1970s, and they have been used in many experiments through the years, including in the injector chain to the Large Hadron Collider, which announced last July the discovery of a new particle resonance, believed to bethe long sought Higgs Boson.

So it is of interest to note that Lintott magnets from the 1970s would have aided in the production and control of the high energy proton beams that went on to create the Boson at the LHC, as well as being used on test facilities for the next generation of particle colliders, such as the proposed 30-mile long Compact Linear Collider, CLIC.

According to magnet experts at CERN the magnets have been noted for their reliability and

robustness in operation.

BRIAN CHRISTIAN

Former Horsham resident, Lincolnshire