The morphological scheme devised by Hubble and followers to classify galaxies has proven over many decades to be quite effective in directing our quest for the fundamental pa rameters describing the extragalactic manifold. This statement is however far more true for spirals than for ellipticals. Echoing the concluding remarks in Scott Tremaine's sum mary talk at the Princeton meeting on Structure and Dynamics of Elliptical Galaxies, "the Hubble classification of spirals is useful because many properties of spirals (gas con tent, spiral arm morphology, bulge prominence, etc. ) all correlate...

The idea of holding a colloquium on Schmidt telescopes (techniques and science) originated from the observation that, in the last ten years and in spite of the remarkable developments and achievements in this field of astronomical research, there had been no specific opportunity for the experts to meet together, make the point on the state of the art, discuss and coordinate future plans. Therefore, Prof. L. Rosino, one of the pioneers in the use of wide-field telescopes, driven also by the wish of honouring the over four decades of activity of the Asiago Observatory, proposed to the Executive...