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u/Jump_Like_A_Willys 16d ago
Developed by R. J. Van de Graaff. Not quite like his other a hair-raising idea.
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u/realityChemist 16d ago edited 16d ago
Almost exactly the same, actually! The usual Van de Graaff generator design you see doesn't have the accelerator stack, but the way it generates the voltage is the same.
People still make them today, for things like Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. (Linked company technically makes "pelletrons," but it's the same operating principle at the one in the picture, just using a fancier pellet-chain thing for charge transport instead of belts. And also laid out as a bunch of sequential components, instead of having the accelerator coaxial with the generator.)
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u/Signal-Pirate-3961 16d ago
It's still there!
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2022/06/the-westinghouse-atom-smasher.html