There has been a lot of interest in compact sources of high brightness, relativistic electron beams. One approach for developing such a source is to apply a high gradient that remains constant during the generation and acceleration of the electron beam. In this paper, we describe high voltage pulse generators that deliver up to 5 MV with 1 ns pulse duration. These devices are synchronizable to an external trigger with jitter of ∼ 0.5 ns and can establish gradients in excess of 1 GV/m between two electrodes without breakdown. In the presence of field gradients up to 0.5 GV/m, electron beams of bunch lengths ranging from 1 ns to 0.3 ps and diameter < 300 &mgr;m have been generated by irradiating the cathode with UV lasers. Characteristics of these electron beams as well as those produced via field emission at gradients up to 1 GV/m will be discussed. © 2003 American Institute of Physics