In the spring of 1970 Peter Farago organised a three-day conference on Polarised Electron Beams at Carberry Tower, near Edinburgh. Although the development of the gallium arsenide source, which was to revolutionise the world of experimental polarised electron physics, was still some years in the future, the meeting provided an important forum for the exchange of ideas among theoreticians and experimentalists engaged in both high and low energy electron collision studies. As soon as the decision had been taken to hold the 5th European Conference on Atomic and Molecular Physics in Edinburgh in...