Fusor Forums

The Development of High Energy Acclerators, M. Stanley Livingston, Dover 1966.

This is fantastic! Just like every volume in the Classics of Science series by Dover this book gives you the history and presents all of the complete, original, tell-all, scientific papers by everyone who made a first accelerator design!

There are all of the major papers by Crockcroft, Walton,Lawrence, Herb, Ising, Alvarez, Kerst, McMillan, Bohm, Foldy, Blewett, Christofilos, Thomas and others. One volume with all this and photos and diagrams.

I now own several copies of each of the significant volumes in this series. (This is volume three).

This is the most difficult of all of them to obtain. Poor, dog eared copies can cost over $30.00. (Original list price was $2.50) Most decent priced copies are in foriegn hands. Mine came from Queensland, Australia.

If you are an accelerator nut who hungers from MEV energies in your basement, this is a great book to have.

ALL OF THE DOVER CLASSICS OF SCIENCE SERIES ARE FANTASTIC! ALL ARE PAPER BACKS! They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

Richard Hull

Richard, I have several M.S. Livingston books that deal with particle physics and accelerators. They are all excellent. Unfortunately they all seem to omit the early stages in accelerator development(ie. Cockroft-Walton, Van de Graaff, drift tubes, etc).

Does this book include patents and specifics on the individual designs ? How detailed are the diagrams ?

Based upon my first attempts at finding this book, I have the feeling that I will have quite the hunt ahead of me. So Far Amazon, Powells and eBay have turned up nil. I even e-mailed Dover who stated that there are no plans on a re-print.

Mark Rowley

Mark, Check out these guys:

http://www.biblio.com/bookstores/bookyd11.html

Jon Rosenstiel

Thanks Jon ! Hopefully it will be here soon.

Mark Rowley

The book is complete enough for the amateur to work on stuff. Remember, these are original scientific papers and not patents.

We are treated to the authors' descriptions of fires and arcs to other items in the crude labs of the time in the earliest accounts.

This is why when I hear folks talking glibly about megavolt supplies, I just smile. I have been there with Tesla coils and van de graff's. I know that caging up even a megavolt is no mean task.

Why should it do work in the accelerator tube where there is a super vacuum when there are all sorts of more interesting and ready made sort of conductive dielectrics all about the lab with varying degrees of moisture and dust on them?

Dielectric surfaces are real loss items in the presence of high voltages. Surface currents and surface charges are easily detected. This is why the huge number of equipotential rings are used in large van de graff accelerator columns. It is all about field control and not about wiring HV stuff up. Really high voltage stuff usually travels on uninsulated conductors.

Richard Hull