Council commissions the Super Proton Synchrotron

Seven kilometres in circumference, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) was the first of CERN’s giant underground rings. It was also the first accelerator to cross the Franco–Swiss border.

Eleven of CERN's member states approved the construction of the SPS in February 1971, and it was switched on for the first time on 17 June 1976, two years ahead of schedule. The SPS quickly became the workhorse of CERN’s particle physics programme, providing beams to two large experimental areas. Advances in technology during the building period meant that not only was construction finished early, it was able to operate with a beam energy of 400 GeV - 100 GeV higher than the original design energy.

The SPS operates today at up to 450 GeV, and has handled many different kinds of particles. Research using SPS beams has probed the inner structure of protons, investigated nature’s preference for matter over antimatter, looked for matter as it might have been in the first instants of the universe and searched for exotic forms of matter.