Culham stellarator programme, 1965―1980

The stellarator programme at Culham is reviewed. Results from the CLASP, PROTO-CLEO, TWIST, TORSO and CLEO devices are presented. The CLASP experiment showed that stellarator fields have very good potential for confining singly charged particles. Results from PROTO-CLEO showed that stellarator confinement could be better than that given by the Bohm formula; ohmically heated plasmas on CLEO showed that parameters similar to those of tokamaks could be obtained. Neutral injection into CLEO successfully heated the plasma to beta values close to the stability limit. The first ECRH results on CLEO indicated the significant potential that stellarators posses for currentless operation.