![](Images/beauvais1.gif)
The Saint-Pierre Cathedral (A.D. 1225 - 1568) of Beauvais,
France was the inspiration behind Wilson Hall.
During
the early 1950's there was a need for a new large accelerator facility
in the United States, therefore a group called MURA (Midwestern Universities
Research Association) was formed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
specifically to take on this enormous task. By the early 1960's the
accelerator
research
panel
had made
several recommendations about the accelerator project. The panel
reccomended that four things needed to be constructed to get the
project under way. What the panel had suggested was that
a super high current accelerator be constructed, a proton accelerator
of approximately 200 GeV ( this would be Fermilabs original main
ring) be constructed, storage rings needed to be constructed and
a design study for an approximately 800 GeV machine needed to be
formed.
On
November 21, 1967 President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill allowing
the go ahead of the Fermi National Accelerator and by early 1968
congress approved funding to build the laboratory. In 1967 the Fermilab
cost $243 million with an additional $120 million in 1983 to complete
the Tevatron. The site chosen by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
was
just outside Chicago
Illinois
in a small town called Weston, Illinois. The first person chosen
to take on the complicated task of running the Fermilab was Founding
Director Robert R. Wilson, and from the outset Robert committed the
laboratory to firm principles of scientific excellence, esthetic
beauty, stewardship of the land, fiscal responsibility and equality
of opportuniy (Fermi website, http://www.fnal.gov/pub/contact/index.html).