Pioneering Use of Synchrotron Radiation Research as a Spectroscopic and Metrological Tool at NBS

Interest in the use of synchrotron radiation (SR) as a source of continuum in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectral region was stimulated by the 1956 Physical Review article by Diran Tomboulian and Paul Hartman [1] of Cornell University. In their all-too-brief access to the Cornell 320 MeV electron synchrotron, they showed that SR should be an extremely useful intensity standard in the EUV. They also showed the continuum nature of SR by observing structure at the K-edge of Be at 112 eV.