A magnetically confined thermal electric arc gas heater of easy construction, handling, and maintenance has been designed, built, and tested as a suitable source of heat for dissociating hydrogen molecules. The plasma species in the gas discharge region are assumed to satisfy local thermodynamic equilibrium conditions. The average beam kinetic energy is determined to be 1.5 eV, leading to an arc temperature of approximately 8700 K; the dissociation rate is 0.5 atoms per molecule and the total atom beam intensity in the forward direction is 1018atoms/sr s. This novel atom source has been successfully ignited and operated with pure hydrogen during several hours of continuous performance, maintaining its characteristics and overcoming some of the difficulties previously found by researchers using other arc sources. The hyperthermal hydrogen atom beam obtained from this source is identified by MoO3chemical detectors, and analyzed and characterized by three different calorimetric sensors, Ni, Ta, and Teflon. The experimental results obtained with this dissociator agree with those published in the literature.