Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the very first start-up of the Institut Laue-Langevin's research reactor on this last day of August 1971 ‑ an extraordinary achievement, in both technical and human terms.  Within just four years of the signature of the Intergovernmental Convention launching the project, the reactor was complete and producing its first neutrons - an extraordinary achievement, in both technical and human terms. Scientific publications of the results of the first experiments were soon to follow.