In June of 1992, the new particle physics accelerator HERA provided the world's first collisions of electrons and protons. HERA allows us to see inside the proton with a resolution of about an order of magnitude better than previously possible. The ZEUS experiment is one of two large detector systems now recording data from the electron-proton collisions provided by HERA.
The ZEUS experiment is composed of 20 specialized sub-detector components. Each component performs a specific function which is coordinated with the other components to reconstruct the total picture of the collision events. There are, however, common tasks to be performed by the components, such as reading out their electronic signals, detecting interesting events and accumulating the data from these events. Most components in the ZEUS experiment use transputers to accomplish these tasks.