[en] All large tokamak fusion experiments today use auxiliary heating by multi-megawatt beams of neutral isotopes of hydrogen injected with energies in the neighborhood of 100 keV per atom. This requires reliable operation of large ion sources, each delivering many tens of amperes of protons or deuterons, and soon even tritons. For meaningful experiments these sources must operate with pulse durations measured in seconds, although the duty factor may still be small. It is remarkable that the successful sources developed in Europe, Japan and the US are all very similar in basic design: the plasma is produced by diffuse low-pressure high-current discharges in magnetic multipole ''buckets'' was distributed thermionically emitting cathodes. This paper briefly reviews the principal considerations and the basic physics of these sources, and summarizes the collective experience to date and describes the impressive recent performance of the US Common Long Pulse Source, as a specific example. 20 refs., 6 figs., 2 tabs