“First light” shone forth this fall from three new synchrotron radiation facilities around the world: the Advanced Light Source, at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California; Elettra, at the Sincrotrone Trieste in Italy; and the Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, in Hsinshu, Taiwan. With electron energies ranging from 1 to 2 GeV, they are designed to produce high‐brightness beams ranging from the ultraviolet to soft x rays, corresponding to photon energies from 10 eV to several keV. Hard x rays, with energies between 1 and 250 keV, have been produced since the summer of 1992 by the 6‐GeV European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. The first of three synchrotron facilities designed to supply hard x rays from undulators, the ESRF is preparing to welcome external users to its site adjacent to the Laue‐Langevin Institute in September 1994.