I have made use of X-ray powder diffraction patterns for over sixty years. In the summer of 1922, in anticipation of my becoming a graduate student in chemistry, I read the book “X-Rays and Crystal Structure,” by W. H. and W. L. Bragg. Then in September 1922 I arrived in Pasadena, and immediately began to learn how to determine the structure of a crystal by a study of the X-ray diffraction pattern from Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson, who was the first person to have received a Ph.D. degree from the California Institute of Technology (1920). The procedure in use in Pasadena started with the preparation of a photograph showing lines obtained by Bragg reflection from a developed face of a large crystal with monochromatic radiation, usually molybdenum K alpha and beta. Measurement of the angle of reflection gave a set of possible values for the length of the edges of the unit of structure, usually of a cubic, hexagonal, or tetragonal crystal, since the methods were not powerful enough to permit the evaluation of more than two or three parameters. The next step was the preparation of Laue photographs, and their analysis. This was a powerful method, which often led to the correct structures.