The innards of a nuclear reactor, from a relatively recent patent application. That is, 1966. By inventor Philo T. Farnsworth.
It’s a fusor, which is to say a thing that makes fusion happen. Not the fission that uses radioactive stuff to make nuclear energy, but fusion. It never worked exactly right, but it’s close enough to be promising. Still.
It’s made by taking the guts of four TV sets (the old-fashioned cathode ray kind) and pointing them at each other instead of phosphorescent glass screens. Particle beams, colliding in a chamber.
Nowadays, devices like this one are mostly used to get extra neutrons. You know, for, like, neutron stuff.
Image found on Wikimedia Commons.