Early particle accelerators generally consisted of three parts, the accelerator, a metal target, and some sort of detector. Detectors differed depending on the reactions being studied, but one class of inexpensive and useful detectors consisted of a large volume of photographic emulsion, often on individual plates, that would capture the particles as they moved through the stack. As the high-energy community moved to larger accelerators and exotic particles and reactions, new detectors were introduced that worked on different principles. The film technique remains in use today in certain fields; small versions can be flown on balloons, while larger versions can be placed in mines, both in order to capture rare but extremely high-energy cosmic rays.