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The 1969 SLAC-MIT deep inelastic electron scattering experiment found approximate Bjorken scaling: an estimated deep-inelastic structure function depended mainly on a ratio of kinematic variables. Its restricted angular coverage did not separately determine both deep-inelastic structure functions, and the extraction assumed transverse virtual photons. This was motivation for a microscopic theory, not already a measurement of the QCD coupling.^[ref]

The 1973 David Gross–Frank Wilczek calculation supplied a quantum field theory explanation of approximately free partons with calculable logarithmic corrections. Asymptotic freedom therefore permits approximate Bjorken scaling without requiring exact scale independence. The QCD coupling governs the corrections, while parton distribution functions and their evolution connect the short-distance calculation to a proton.^[ref]

In a later direct test, H1 collided Positrons and protons at HERA and selected deep inelastic scattering events. A liquid-argon particle calorimeter identified the outgoing Positron with an associated track; calorimeter deposits and charged tracks reconstructed particle jets in the Breit frame. Vertex, timing and longitudinal energy-balance cuts suppressed backgrounds; two simulations checked detector corrections. Fits of particle jet cross sections to next-to-leading-order QCD extracted ${\alpha }_s(E_T)$ in transverse-energy bins, consistent with decreasing QCD coupling. Hadronization, parton distribution functions and renormalization scale choices limited the inference. This measures rates and fits a coupling, rather than directly reading a force meter.^[ref]

Starting in 1967, a collaboration at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology directed an Electron beam at liquid hydrogen, providing proton targets. Jerome Isaac Friedman, Henry Way Kendall and Richard Edward Taylor participated in this experimental program.^[ref]

The 1969 paper Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering reports inclusive Electron spectra at $6^{\circ }$ and $10^{\circ }$ with incident energies from $7$ to $17\mathrm{GeV}$. Its scaling comparison estimated ${\nu }_{\mathrm{lab}}{W}_2$ under a transverse-virtual photon assumption, finding approximate agreement as a function of $\omega =1/x$ for $Q^2>1{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$ and $\omega >4$. These are the paper's conditions, not a claim of exact Bjorken scaling at every momentum transfer.^[ref]