A historical perspective on localized waves

A historical perspective on the origins, development and applications of localized waves (LWs) will be presented. In similarity with plane waves, the fundamental LWs can be superimposed to form finite energy solutions of the wave equation or Maxwell's equations. In contrast to plane waves, some form of localization in space-time and phase space is a characteristic of LWs. Bi-directional representations of these LWs help reveal their intrinsic properties and provide techniques to generate many varietals of them. Experimental confirmation of launching LWs from independently addressable, time dependent arrays will be described.