The Atom Smasher

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__________________. - Photo from family albums

__________________. - Photo from family albums

Way back in the 1958-61 era, several of us worked to re-build an existing C-W machine. We used an old 100kv transformer from an ancient x-ray machine, two diode tubes and power line capacitors to construct a voltage doubler. These were placed in tanks of transformer oil. (First picture)

Another transformer was re-wound to give us isolated 110 vac at 200 kv above ground (middle tank in last picture.) This replaced a motor and a generator connected by v-belt (for isolation) that had been used on the older machine.

I remember the ends of the corona shield came from the top and bottom of a discarded evaporative cooler. All the machine work was performed by us in the shop of the University of North Texas Physics Department. We had long glass rods that passed through the corona shield from the control console which we used to control the "leak" and the output of the oscillator.

The accelerator was a column of plates through which the ions (D+ in our case) passed. We had a lecture bottle of deuterium under the corona shield. Gas was "leaked" into the column from a glass tube where they were excited by an RF oscillator to strip the atoms of their electrons.

The D+ ions crashed into a target of Deutero-paraffin at the end of the column. There a D-D collision produced a He3 alpha particle and a neutron. We were interested in the results of neutron bombardment on various material. I believe sodium was one of them and maybe arsenic.

We used a mechanical vacuum pump, oil diffusion pump to create our vacuum. We also had a cold trap which we constructed.

I'm sorry to say it, but I've lost all contact with the other men who worked on this project under Dr. Bruce Foster, and their names have faded from my memory during the intervening 40 years.

11-12-2001