The aim of an encyclopaedia is to gather together the currently accepted. Since progress in natural science and knowledge scattered over the face of the Earth, to set forth technology is generally advancing with increasing speed – its general plan to the men with whom we live and to tra- the rapid progress in computer science and software dev- mit it to the men who will come after us, in order that the la- 1 bors of past centuries may not have been in vain... opment is only one striking example of our time – it has - come more and more difficult to clearly distinguish between Denis DIDEROT Paris 1755 past and present achievements as well as to analyze their impact on other branches of science from the distant view of a historian. Recent achievements may be rated by future generations as important historical milestones, or may be HIS BOOK is an outgrowth of a previous handbook ar- 2 T ticle on the history of shock waves. While preparing forgotten completely. The scientific and technical achievements of percussion, the manuscript for this handbook, it quickly became app- explosions and shock wave research made throughout human ent that this field of enormous breadth could not be a- quately treated without also including the evolution of re- history are too immense even to be cataloged. Up to now they have been determined by estimating industrial and mi- search into percussion and explosion.