Niobium superconducting magnets

The process of design and construction, in 1954, of the first superconducting magnet is described. That magnet had Nb windings on an Fe core. It produced .71T in a small gap at 4.2K. Other Nb magnets, both with and without Fe, were built at several laboratories. Some of them are described, along with the applications to which a few were put. Empirically, it was clear in the 1950s that the performance of Nb as magnet wire was spectacularly improved by cold work.