The Queen of England helped us get the beamline operating in May of 2005, while she was visiting Saskatchewan and the Canadian Light Source with Prince Philip. The ring had been operating but the IR beamlines needed vacuum bellows installed due to delays in shipment. These would complete the UHV chambers to the window outside the shield wall. There were no beam outages on the schedule long enough to do this for 6 months into the fall, so the IR operation was being badly delayed.
But! the CLS had to shut down for a day before the Royal visit on Friday May 20*, to allow security screening and preparation for the Royals. So with two days of no-beam, the technicians quickly vented the ring magnet cell and installed the bellows and we had nearly 48 hours to pump down and bake the system. Then on Sat May 21 at 12:30 pm there was beam in the ring (thankfully no leaks from the bellows!) and the search for beam began. The M2 mirror was steered until a spot of light was seen glowing near the edge of the UHV window. This glow was adjusted to line up along one side, and a lateral scan was made while recording a video at the window.
At the controls was Dr. Dominique Appadoo, now at the Australian Synchrotron, who was the Far IR beamline scientist at the time. Assisting were Tim May the optics designer/project manager for the IR beamlines, and Craig Hyett a graduate student working on the IR beamlines. Subsequently the first light was steered out of the window port on the Mid IR beamline.
Image: Tim and Dominique searching for first light
* Read more on the CLS website