Conceived in the early 1950s, its principle design was based on a similar accelerator at AERE in England.

[4] The first beams were accelerated in 1958, at currents of 5 mA and a pulse length of 20 μs, which was the world record at that time.

[4][5] From then on, the Linac experienced a phase of rapid development and constant improvement of the output parameters.

This culminated in 1978, when a maximal proton current of 70 mA at pulse lengths of 100 μs could be reached.

The PSB had been built to allow for higher energies of the protons beams already before they enter the PS.

This included the testing and implementation of a radio-frequency quadrupole as the initial accelerator, which replaced the original Cockcroft-Walton generator in 1984.

[13] Linac 2 was 36 meters long and was based at ground level at the main CERN site.

Linac 2 was switched off 12 November 2018 at 15:00 by CERN's Director of Accelerators, and was subsequently decommissioned as part of the LHC Injector Upgrade project.

However, much of the Linac 2 accelerator hardware is left (as of October 2023) in place, and can now be visited as part of a guided tour.

[6] The accelerated particles are mainly lead ions, which are provided to the LHC and fixed target experiments at the SPS and LEIR.

By using hydrogen ions instead of protons, the beam loss at the injection is reduced and simplified and this also allows more particles to accumulate in the synchrotron.