Van de Graaff Generator

It's at the Boston Museum of Science; we saw the 2 pm display--always spectacular. We were  with my cousin Walter and his wife Joan, whom we regularly visit during our summer stays in Tamworth, New Hampshire. My father invented the generator in 1929 while getting his doctorate at Oxford University. He built this one in 1933 at Round Hill south of Boston; it was moved to MIT in Cambridge at least by 1950 (when it was photographed by Berenice Abbott). It was moved to the site of the Science Museum in 1957, nearly a decade before the building was extended to reach it.