Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2016
This is the written version of a retrospective talk given at the 20th Radiocarbon Conference in Hawaii, 2009. As requested, this is not a scholarly work, but simply a personal, subjective account of how a good experiment in the field of radiocarbon dating came about. It differs from the talk itself only in that I have eliminated some sideline commentary so that I can add a few thoughts originally intended for the end, when I had talked myself out of time.