This book is presented primarily to record the papers of the Conference on the Exploding Wire Phenomenon conducted by the Air Force Cambridge Research Center in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 2 and 3, 1959. A second and scarcely less important purpose of this book is to serve as a monograph on exploding wires. Nowhere in any language is there a book, or for that matter a section of a book, on electrical wire explosions. The growing interest in and import ance of the phenomenon was indicated by the very gratifying re sponse to the Confe: rence invitations. We hope this book, reaching an even larger audience, will fill a gap in the literature as well as serve as a record of the Conference. A logical arrangement of the papers was extremely difficult to accomplish. On whatever basis they were classified, most papers could have been equally well placed in more than one category. This difficulty was solved by arranging them in three broad classes. If this book is to serve as a monograph, some gene: ral back ground in the exploding wire phenomenon (EWP) is needed. The Introduction was written to serve this purpose. It is, of course, impossible to thank all those without whose help the Conference and this book would not have been possible.

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