Cylindrically converging blast waves have been produced in normal atmospheric conditions by the detonation of the explosives, pentaerythritoltetranitrate, (PETN), over cylindrical surfaces. The shocks generated in this way are so strong that the fronts propagating through the air become luminous of themselves. The production and the propagation of the shocks have been monitored with a framing camera and a streak camera, and the time‐space relations of the shock propagations have been determined using an electrical ionization probing system. The results have shown that the trajectory of the shock fronts near the axis of the cylinder can be approximately represented by the Guderley’s formula.