Many papers in the Colloquium describe the difficulties which now exist when radio astronomers try to make highly sensitive observations in various regions of the spectrum. The author has been involved for about 30 years in attempts to get parts of the radio spectrum “protected” so that radio observations could be made in these regions free from damaging interference. Thus it may be interesting in this paper to look backward to the work done by many people before and during the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) of 1959, and to describe briefly the outcome of that WARC.