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[[Image:Westinghouse Van de Graaff atom smasher - cutaway.png|thumb|upright=1.5|The [[Westinghouse Atom Smasher]], an early [[Van de Graaff accelerator]] built 1937 at the Westinghouse Research Center in Forest Hills, Pennsylvania. The cutaway shows the fabric belts that carry charge up to the mushroom-shaped high voltage electrode. To improve insulation the machine was enclosed in a 65 ft. pressure vessel which was pressurized to 120 psi during operation. The high pressure air increased the voltage on the machine from 1 MV to 5 MV.]]
[[File:KEK Cockcroft-Walton Accelerator (1).jpg|thumb|750 keV [[Cockcroft-Walton accelerator]] initial stage of the [[KEK]] accelerator in Tsukuba, Japan. The high voltage generator is right, the ion source and beam tube is at left]]
An '''electrostatic particle accelerator''' is one of the two main types of [[particle accelerator]]s, in which [[charged particle]]s are accelerated to a high energy by passing through a static [[high voltage]] potential. This contrasts with the other category of particle accelerator, [[Particle accelerator#Oscillating field particle accelerators|oscillating field particle accelerators]], in which the particles are accelerated by passing successively through multiple voltage drops created by oscillating voltages on electrodes. Owing to their simpler design, historically electrostatic types were the first particle accelerators. The two main types are the [[Van de Graaf generator]] invented by [[Robert Van de Graaff]] in 1929, and the [[Cockcroft-Walton accelerator]] invented by [[John Cockcroft]] and [[Ernest Walton]] in 1932. The maximum particle energy produced by electrostatic accelerators is limited by the accelerating voltage on the machine, which is limited by [[electrical breakdown|insulation breakdown]]. Oscillating accelerators do not have this limitation, so they can achieve higher particle energies than electrostatic machines.
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