The 25 years that have elapsed since the first Magnetism Conference constitute a virtual history of magnetism in the U. S. At the first post‐war International Conference on Magnetism held in Grenoble in 1950 (four years prior to the first of the regular U. S. Conferences on Magnetism that were the joint creation of the Physics and Electrical Engineering communities) fewer than ten Americans participated. Then, as two years later at the Maryland Conference, the focus was on ferromagnetism, the magnetization curve, domain wall motions and a brief nod to the then relatively new phenomena of ferrimagnetism, nuclear magnetism and neutron diffraction. The only concession to theory at Maryland was an evening symposium on ferromagnetic exchange that will be remembered by those who attended primarily for the controversy engendered therein. The explosive growth of the field in the subsequent decade is probably as much a consequence of the technological emphasis on applications principally in computers as it is a result of the new theoretical powers made available by those same computers. In an aesthetic sense, the impact that magnetism research has had on kindred fields of science and engineering from lasers to DNA is testimony to the unboundedness of scientific inquiry whatever the initial motivation. It is probably in its impact on the rest of the world of science and engineering that magnetism research today holds its greatest potential.