The present volume and its companion Volume 2 document the proceedings of the Symposium on Surface Contamination: Its Genesis, Detection and Control held in Washington, D.C., September 10-13, 1978. This Symposium was a part of the 4th International Symposium on Contamination Control held under the auspices of the International Committee of Contamination Control Societies, and the Institute of Environmental Sciences (U.S.A.) was the official host. The ubiquitous nature of surface contamination causes concern to everyone dealing with surfaces, and the world of surfaces is wide and open-ended. The technological areas where surface clean ing is of cardinal importance are too many and very diversified. To people working in areas such as adhesion, composites, adsorp tion, friction, lubrication, soldering,device fabrication, printed circuit boards, etc., surface contamination has always been a bete noire. In short, people dealing with surfaces are afflicted with molysmophobiat, and rightfully so. In the past, the subject of surface contamination had been discussed in various meetings, but this symposium was hailed as the most comprehensive symposium ever held on this important topic, as the technical program comprised 70 papers by more than 100 authors from 10 countries. The symposium was truly international in scope and spirits and was very well attended. The attendees represented a broad spectrum of backgrounds, interests, and pro fessional affiliations, but all had a common interest and concern about surface contamination and cleaning.