The Laboratory crosses the border

Aerial view of the CERN site in the snow in the 1960s, with the PS accelerator, resembling a bicycle wheel in shape, built on the border between France and Switzerland. The construction of a new machine had led to the extension of the site in France. (Image : CERN)

On 13 September, the French and Swiss states sign an agreement to extend the CERN site across the French-Swiss border, in preparation for the construction of a new machine – the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) – due to start the following year. With this expansion, CERN becomes the only research centre in the world to straddle the border of two countries.