Image: Westinghouse Van de Graaff atom smasher - cutaway
Description: Cutaway drawing of the Westinghouse Atom Smasher, a Van de Graaff generator built in 1937 at the Westinghouse Corporation research center at Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, USA. It consists of a Van de Graaff generator which generates 5 million volts (MV) on its dome shaped electrode, which is used to accelerate charged subatomic particles through an evacuated tube parallel to the generator's charge carrying belt. Since open-air Van de Graaff machines are limited to about 1 MV by leakage of current from its electrode by arcs and corona discharge, the machine is enclosed in an onion-shaped air tank pressurized to a pressure of 120 pounds per square inch, which allows it to reach a voltage of 5 MV.
Title: Westinghouse Van de Graaff atom smasher - cutaway
Credit: Retrieved April 11, 2015 from "Huge generator to smash atoms" in Popular Science, Popular Science Publishing Co., New York, Vol. 131, No. 1, July 1937, p. 35 on Google Books
Author: Unknown authorUnknown author
Permission: This 1937 issue of Popular Science magazine would have the copyright renewed in 1965. Online page scans of the Catalog of Copyright Entries, published by the US Copyright Office can be found here. Search of the Renewals for Periodicals for 1964, 1965, and 1966 show no renewal entries for Popular Science. Therefore the copyright was not renewed and it is in the public domain.
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No
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