Ever since its birth, 45 years ago, CERN has been active in Ultra High Vacuum Science and Technology, faced with the ever increasing denands of its storage rings and particle accelerators. In many instances, newly discovered beam-gas particle limiting phenomena have led to new developments and solutions in pumping hardware, surface preparations, thin films, etc. Today, the CERN new challenge is to construct the Large Hadron Collider. This machine, like its predecessors, demands new solutions in UHV tecliniques.
