I just finished reading The Making Of The Atomic Bomb and one of the things that really struck me is that the early experiments that Rutherford, Bohr and others were doing were only slightly outside the reach of a really motivated backyard physicist. $120k for a cyclotron is a lot of money, but the fact that a couple of teenagers can even dream of building one is cool. It really humanized the experiments and made the science much more interesting to me. It seems like back then anyone with some time, a modest amount of money and the knowledge could have a chance of making a real discovery.
> $120k for a cyclotron is a lot of money, but the fact that a couple of teenagers can even dream of building one is cool.
As the article said, this is the price for a build using brand-new parts. The prices of used lab instruments are significantly lower than their list prices, a 10x or even 100x reduction is not unheard of. So, at least its electronic instrumentation is going to be cheaper. Though, I know nothing about the mechanical, vacuum, or magnetic part.
