ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors lay the foundations of basic concepts about beam physics, and discuss various important mechanisms of production and acceleration of beams. Because of the breadth of the material and the multitude of existing devices for each of the mechanisms, they focus only on key concepts, and introduce them through the eyes of their inventors by using their original historical drawings, with only minor adjustments for uniformity of style and technical clarity. Electrons exist in abundance in metals, and forming them into beams requires their extraction from the metal, called the cathode. In most proton accelerators, the protons are produced through stripping the two electrons in a negative hydrogen ion at the entrance, mostly by passing the ion through a thin carbon foil, although lasers have also been experimented with recently.
