Most of the properties of a metal-electrolyte interface, even the spe- cific nature of an electrode reaction, proneness of a metal to cor- rosion, etc., are primarily determined by the electrical double layer (EDL) at this boundary. It is therefore no surprise that for the last, at least, one hundred years intent attention should have been centered on EDL. So much of material has been gathered to date that we are easi- ly lost in this maze of information. A substantial part of the attempts to systematize these facts is made at present within the framework of thermodynamics. Such a confined...