Tim Scully

Robert "Tim" Scully (born August 27, 1944) is an American computer engineer, best known in the psychedelic underground for his work in the production of LSD from 1966 to 1969, for which he was indicted in 1973 and convicted in 1974.

In eighth grade, he won honorable mention in the 1958 Bay Area Science Fair for designing and building a small computer.

During high school, he spent summers working at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on physics problems.

In his junior year of high school, Scully completed a small linear accelerator in the school science lab (he was trying to make gold atoms from mercury), which was pictured in a 1961 edition of the Oakland Tribune.

Scully skipped his senior year of high school and went directly to U.C. Berkeley, majoring in mathematical physics.

5,000 20 milligram tablets of STP (which was initially synthesized as "DOM" by Alexander Shulgin in 1963) were initially distributed at the Golden Gate Park summer solstice festival in 1967; however, the substance quickly acquired a bad reputation due to the excessively high dose and slow onset of action.

Owsley and Scully made trial batches of 10 mg tablets and then STP mixed with LSD in a few hundred yellow tablets but soon ceased production of STP.

After two years at Berkeley, Scully took a leave of absence in 1964 because his services as an electronic design consultant were in high demand.

During this period, he first took LSD on April 15, 1965.

1965: Apprentice to Owsely

Scully knew the government would move quickly to suppress LSD distribution, and he wanted to obtain as much of the main precursor chemical, lysergic acid, as possible.

Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate.

Owsley and Scully finally met a few weeks before the Trips Festival in the fall of 1965.

The 30-year-old Owsley took the 21-year-old Scully as his apprentice and they pursued their mutual interest in electronics and psychedelic synthesis.

1966: Point Richmond lab and "White Lightning"

Owsley took Scully to the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966, and they built electronic equipment for the Grateful Dead until late spring 1966.

In July 1966 Owsley rented a house in Point Richmond, California and Owsley and Melissa Cargill (Owsley's girlfriend who was a skilled chemist) set up a lab in the basement.

Tim Scully worked there as Owsley's apprentice.

Owsley had developed a method of LSD synthesis which left the LSD 99.9% pure.

The Point Richmond lab turned out over 300,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed "White Lightning".

LSD became illegal in California on October 6, 1966, so Owsley and Scully decided to set up a new lab in Denver, Colorado.

1967: 1st Denver lab and STP

Scully set up the new lab in the basement of a house across the street from the Denver zoo in early 1967.

Owsley and Scully made the LSD in the Denver lab.

100,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of Monterey Purple were made in Denver for the Monterey Pop Festival.

Later Owsley started to tablet more of the product in Orinda, California but was arrested before he completed that work.

Owsley and Scully also produced a hitherto uncommon psychedelic amphetamine in Denver which they called STP.

Owsley and Scully produced about 196 grams of LSD in 1967, but 96 grams of this was confiscated by the authorities; Scully moved the lab to a different house in Denver after Owsley was arrested on Christmas Eve 1967.

Tim Scully first met William "Billy" Mellon Hitchcock, grandson of William Larimer Mellon and great-great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, through Owsley in April 1967.

1968: 2nd Denver lab and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love

They became friends and Billy loaned Scully $12,000 for the second Denver lab in 1968.

The product from the lab was distributed by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love; Scully was connected with the Brotherhood via Billy Hitchcock.

The second Denver lab was discovered in June 1968 by the police while Scully was in Europe searching for a new supply of precursor chemicals.

His lab assistants were arrested there when they returned a few days later.

Scully was not arrested at that time.

The search was eventually ruled illegal and the case was dropped, but the lab had cost approximately $25,000 to set up and now Scully was looking for a new lab in addition to precursor chemicals.

His best known product, dubbed "Orange Sunshine", was considered the standard for quality LSD in 1969.

He was featured in the documentary The Sunshine Makers.

Scully grew up in Pleasant Hill, which is across the Bay from San Francisco.

1969: Windsor lab and "Orange Sunshine"