[3] In 1966 a subcommittee of the National Research Council, which had been investigating the properties of synchrotron radiation from the 240 MeV ring, recommended it be completed as a tool for spectroscopy.

[1] With the demise of MURA, a new entity was created to run the facility: the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC), administered by the University of Wisconsin.

[2] On August 7, 1968, this first dedicated storage ring based synchrotron radiation facility produced its first data when Ulrich Gerhardt of the University of Chicago, carried out simultaneous reflection and absorption measurements on CdS over the wavelength range 1100-2700 Å.

After someone posted a sign alerting users to the policy, an international contest began, with each person translating the message into their own language.

In the mid-1970s the increasing beam current from the ring gave intensity levels sufficient for angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, with a joint Bell Labs–Montana State University group conducting the earliest experiments.

[6] With the new Aladdin storage ring operating, Tantalus was officially decommissioned in 1987, although it was run for six weeks in the summer of 1988 for experiments in atomic and molecular fluorescence.

[2] In 1976 SRC submitted a proposal to the NSF for a 750 MeV storage ring as an intense source of VUV and soft x-ray radiation to an energy greater than 1 keV.

The final design was a four straight section 1 GeV ring, of 89 metres (292 ft) circumference, and construction of some components started in 1978.

[8] The construction phase of Aladdin ended in 1981, but by late 1984 SRC had been unable to complete the commissioning of the facility, with a maximum stored current of 2.5 mA, too little to provide useful light intensities.

In May 1985, after a review by L. Edward Temple of the Department of Energy, which recommended still another study period while difficulties were ironed out, NSF director Eric Bloch decided not only against the upgrade, but also against continued funding for Aladdin operations.

The University of Wisconsin made it clear it would only continue funding Aladdin until June 1986, a situation characterized on campus as the Perils of Pauline.

Concurrent with these events, the technical issue limiting the machine performance had been solved, and three months after the decision to withdraw NSF funding, currents of 40 mA had been achieved.

The trophy had an octagonal base representing Tantalus, with a beer can from the lab picnic which preceded the flood, topped by a concrete "raindrop".