The Cambridge Electron Accelerator

On Wednesday, March 7, the first high‐energy electrons were produced by the new electron accelerator which was designed, has been built, and will be operated in Cambridge, Mass., as a joint project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. In its trial operations, the machine produced a beam of 2.2‐Bev electrons, and at that time it was expected that the maximum design energy of about 6‐Bev would be reached within a matter of weeks. The instrument, a strong‐focusing synchrotron featuring a number of sophisticated innovations, including a “choke” for storing magnetic energy which was suggested by E. M. Purcell of Harvard, is supported by the Atomic Energy Commission and was built at a cost of $12 million. (About six years ago, when the Commission formally announced having approved the construction of the machine, it was estimated that the cost would approximate $6.5 million and that it would be completed in about three and a half years.)