At CERN there is a demand for high currents of highly charged ions, presently for fixed target experiments at the SPS and in the future for the LHC project. The LHC, however, requires an intensity, which is an order of magnitude larger than the intensity presently achieved using an electron cyclotron resonance ion source. Laser ion sources have the potential to fulfill the LHC requirements, although a large number of technical problems have to be overcome. At CERN a project to investigate the feasibility of the application of laser ion sources was started in 1989 and a source capable of producing large currents of highly charged ions was constructed. The results of the investigations on this source, including charge state distributions, measurements of the energy distribution, measurements of ion currents, and emittance measurements will be presented. Furthermore a method to reduce the time‐dependent energy change is described. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.