Description of a Drift Chamber System Employed in an Experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory

We have designed and constructed a drift chamber1 system containing /m=~/250 wires for use in a double arm magnetic spectrometer experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory AGS. Our basic experimental constraints were the need for (i) good detection efficiency (ii) a reasonably linear relationship between drift time and position (iii) long term stability in a high particle flux environment and (iv) ease of construction. In addition we also constructed our own electronics for reading out this drift time information with much the same set of restrictions.