Life and Work of Rolf Wideröe by © Pedro Waloschek,     => Contents


Box 5:  The Many Names of the Betatron

Steenbeck and Gund (see also Box 9) called their accelerator machines `ELECTRON-CENTRIFUGE', while Schmellenmeier and Gans used the name `RHEOTRON'. Wideröe had introduced the very apt appellation `RAY-TRANSFORMER'.

In Slepian's patent of 1922 the machine is modestly described as an `X-RAY TUBE'. Kerst and Serber used the expression `INDUCTION-ACCELERATOR' in their famous papers of 1941.

It wasn't until 1942 that Kerst introduced the now generally accepted term, `BETATRON'.