50 Years - Science & Technology Facilities Council

1960s
1962 saw the creation of Daresbury Laboratory, designed as a home for a new 5GeV electron synchrotron,
NINA (National Institute’s Northern Accelerator). Daresbury’s solid sandstone geology and ready access to
cooling water from the nearby Bridgewater Canal made it the perfect location, and construction on the site
began in 1963. This was completed in 1965 and the first beam was accelerated in NINA on 2 December 1966.
Around the same time, Daresbury was positioning itself as a leader in computational science, a position it
maintains to this day, acquiring its first mainframe computer in 1966 at a time when such devices were quite
rare. The then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, officially opened the Laboratory in 1967, laying down the
foundations for all of the science that has since come out of Daresbury.
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