The first ring for the barrel yoke of the CMS superconducting magnet under assembly in 1999 by the manufacturer Deggendorfer Werft und Eisenbau GmbH (DWE) in Germany.
Two modules of the CMS solenoid at the manufacturers, Ansaldo, in Italy. The lower module was the first travel to CERN from Genova, at the end of January 2004. Image credit: INFN.
On 1 February 2005, the cavern for the CMS detector at CERN was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by many guests, including representatives of the construction companies.
The first half of the barrel hadron calorimeter was tested in March 2006 using a radioactive source before insertion into the solenoid in early April. The seconf half was inserted a month later.
On 24 July 2006 the massive CMS magnet yoke was closed for the first time for tests of much of the detector while still on the surface, before the lowering began.
On 28 February 2007 the heaviest section of CMS, containing the complete solenoid, made the 100 m descent into the cavern, descending at a rate of about 10 m an hour.
The silicon strip tracking detector reached its final resting place in the CMS experiment on 13 December 2007. It is the largest detector of its kind ever constructed.
The final crystals for the electromagnetic calorimeter arrived at CERN from China and Russia in March 2008, completing a mammoth production process nearly 10 years after the delivery of the first production crystal in September 1998.
• June 2008 p6.