 This circuit was first invented by Heinrich Greinacher in 1913 (published 1914) to provide the 200 – 300 V he needed for his newly invented ionometer, the 110 V AC supplied by the Zurich power stations of the time being insufficient. He later extended this idea into a cascade of multipliers in 1920. This cascade of Greinacher cells is often inaccurately referred to as a Villard cascade. It is also called a Cockcroft – Walton multiplier after the particle accelerator machine built by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, who independently discovered the circuit in 1932. The concept in this topology can be extended to a voltage quadrupler circuit by using two Greinacher cells of opposite polarities driven from the same AC source. The output is taken across the two individual outputs. As with a bridge circuit, it is impossible to simultaneously ground the input and output of this circuit.
