A drift chamber is an apparatus for measuring the space coordinates of the trajectory of a charged particle. This is achieved by detecting the ionization electrons produced by the charged particle in the gas of the chamber and by measuring their drift times and arrival positions on sensitive electrodes. When the multiwire proportional chamber, or Charpak chamber as we used to call it, was introduced in 1968, its authors had already noted that the time of a signal could be useful for a coordinate determination, and rst studies with a drift ch- ber were made by Bressani, Charpak, Rahm and...

The book gives a quite complete and up-to-date picture of the Standard Theory with an historical perspective, with a collection of articles written by some of the protagonists of present particle physics.