• 1962: Contract execution and start of accelerator construction
• 1966: Construction completed and research begins
• 1967: 20-GeV electron beam achieved
• 1968: First evidence discovered for quarks
• 1972: SPEAR operations begin
• 1973: Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project (SSRP) started
• 1974: Discovery of psi particle
• 1976: Discovery of charm quark and tau lepton
• 1976: Nobel Prize shared by SLAC's Burton Richter for the J/psi discovery
• 1977: SSRP becomes Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL)
• 1980: PEP operations begin
• 1982: Wolf Prize awarded to SLAC's Martin Perl for discovery of the tau lepton
• 1989: SLC operations begin, 50 GeV electron and positron beams achieved
• 1990: Nobel Prize shared by SLAC's Richard Taylor for first evidence that nucleons consist of quarks
• 1990: SPEAR becomes a dedicated synchrotron radiation facility with its own independent injector.
• 1992 SSRL becomes a Division of SLAC
• 1993: Final Focus Test Beam facility constructed
• 1994: Initiation of the PEP-II project to build the Asymmetric B Factory
• 1995: Nobel Prize in Physics shared by Martin Perl for the discovery of the tau lepton.
• 1996: NLCTA project initiated
• 1997: First beam injected into B Factory
• 1998: First B Factory particle collision occurs
• 1999: First Events recorded by B Factory's BaBar detector
• 2000: Joint NASA-Stanford GLAST project initiated, Helen Quinn shares Dirac Medal
• 2002: SLAC celebrates 40th anniversary, LCLS project approved
• 2003: Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology established

See also: Scientific Achievements and Contributions and the Archives & History Office website.