Liquid hydrogen bubble chamber (diam. 30 cm), seen here being inserted into its vacuum tank

In the 1950s and 1960s, bubble and spark chambers were the dominant experimental tools in high-energy physics. While spark chambers were usually built and fitted to specific experiments, bubble chambers were constructed as general purpose devices that could be used for a variety of experiments. At CERN, the bubble chamber programme started under Charles Peyrou in the late 1950s. The first of CERN's bubble chambers, a 30 cm hydrogen chamber, is seen here being inserted into its vacuum tank. The HBC30, as it was called, took its first beam from the SC in 1959. One of the first pictures taken, of a positive pion-proton interaction, began a long series of pretty images for which bubble chambers would become famous. When it stopped operating in spring 1962, the HBC30 had consumed 150 km of film in its 3 years of operation.