The principle of the magnetic resonance accelerator, now known as the cyclotron, was proposed by Professor Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California in 1930, in a short article in Science by Lawrence and N. E. Edlefsen. It was suggested by the experiment of Wideröe in 1928, in which ions of Na and K were accelerated to twice the applied voltage while traversing two tubular electrodes in line between which an oscillatory electric field was applied—an elementary linear accelerator. In 1953 Professor Lawrence described to the writer the origin of the idea, as he then remembered it.
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© 1959 American Institute of Physics.
1959
American Institute of Physics
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