The Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) is an instrument designed to measure intrinsic anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on angular scales from about 3 arc minutes to one degree (spherical harmonics ofl∼4250tol∼400). The CBI is a 13 element interferometer mounted on a 6 meter platform operating in ten 1-GHz frequency bands from 26 to 36 GHz. We present a review of the capabilities of the instrument and a discussion of observations which have been taken over the past year from the Atacama desert of Chile. We also present first results from the CBI which show a strong cutoff in the power spectrum betweenl=600andl=1200which is consistent with the photon-diffusive damping predicted by most models of structure formation in the early universe. We discuss future topics which the CBI will address. ©2001 American Institute of Physics.