Support for crystallography at Atlas came initially with the mounting of a number of program suites. Probably the most successful was X-Ray 63. This provided the crystallographer with all the basic calculations necessary for structure analysis giving maximum possible control over the calculation but with minimum data preparation.
Complementary to systems for crystallography was the need to collect the data needed for such a crystal structure analysis. Typically a crystal is surrounded by X-ray film as a beam of X-rays is fired at it. The film produced needs to be measured for structure properties which was the role of the microdensitometer service.
The Microdensitometer service moved to Daresbury in 1976. It was in operation at Atlas for just over two years handling about 70 separate projects in the second year.
