Doctor Zharkov's Atomic Disintegrator.

Although it looks more like set dressing for a 1930s Flash Gordon serial, this is a genuine piece of research equipment used in the early investigations into the nature of matter around the time 'Buster' Crabbe was cliff-hanging audiences in their cinemas.

A new addition to the exhibits at the National Museum of Scotland, this Cockcroft-Walton Generator was used to create high DC current from a low AC input, and was used to power the first particle accelerators. Developed by physicists John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, a similar multipler circuit to this was used by them to perform the first atomic disintegration in 1932, a feat which earned them the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics for the "Transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles".

This particular example was used by the University of Edinburgh until 1974.