ECS Classics: Historical Origins of the Rotating Ring-Disk Electrode

The article recounts in 2016 the history of the rotating disk and rotating ring disk electrode, which originated as a concept and soon a practical device fifty years ago. In a technical and entertaining style the author takes the reader in time across the Iron Curtain and back introducing the advances, history, and key players in the development. The theoretical foundation goes to Russians Frumkin and Levich. The idea of the instrumentation originally developed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and became widely known as a powerful electroanalytical tool via the publication of a seminal series of theoretical papers by Albery, Bruckenstein, Johnson, and Napp. A history based on personal interviews, conducted by the author, and on the scientific literature is told here, tracing the path of RRDE development from Moscow to Minneapolis to Oxford.