In recent years, in a number of laboratories throughout the world, a considerable amount of effort has gone into the development and the understanding of organic nuclear charged particle track detectors. Even in their developmental stage these detectors have found numerous applications in several scientific fields. The object of this paper is to present a brief résumé of some of the most important recent developments in this field. The scope is limited to the pre-etching phenomena; etching and post-etching treatments are covered by Medveczky.(1)