Gravitational Wave Detection: A Historical Perspective

The search for gravitational waves began at the Chapel Hill Conference in January 1957, and will reach a successful conclusion at a set of observatories around the globe about sixty years later. This talk will review the history of the early thought experiments, the program of resonant mass detectors (``Weber bars''), and the development of the large interferometric detectors like Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo that are, it is hoped, about to make the first detections of gravitational wave signals.