 The Tevatron was in research and development phase between 1973 and 1979 while the acceleration at the Main Ring continued to be enhanced.A series of milestones saw acceleration rise to 20 GeV on January 22, 1972, to 53 GeV on February 4 and to 100 GeV on February 11.On March 1, 1972, the then NAL accelerator system accelerated for the first time a beam of protons to its design energy of 200 GeV.