Cover Illustration:The drawing shows the field in a RHIC dipole magnet when powered to operating current. The outer circle represents the 80 mm magnet coil diameter. The green central portion shows the "good" part of the 3.45 T field: where its strength is uniform to within ± two parts in 10 4 . The colored contours represent field changes of two parts in 10 4 of the central field. The white center circle shows an area encompassing 95% of the particles in a gold heavy ion beam traversing the magnet. Note that the beam is safely within the good field region of the magnet. This is a first-person account of some of the events in the development of high field superconducting magnets for the SSC and RHIC colliding beam machines in the 1980's and early 1990's at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). 1 It is a history that is not well known and about which various people have expressed some curiosity. It is written in plain English (hopefully) instead of the jargon of the trade to make it more readable. In those years, after the demise of the BNL Isabelle/CBA program, the Magnet Division (MD) became heavily engaged in R&D for the SSC with a peak work force of some 175 physicists, engineers, designers, technicians, and support personnel. In addition to the SSC work, the Division in parallel developed the magnets for RHIC and transferred the drawings and technology for building those magnets to industry. It also undertook Work for Others that could be accomplished by the MD staff or facilities (please see the Topic, MD: Projects Beyond SSC & RHIC for a listing). Numerous innovative and significant magnet construction and design features were developed by the Division in those years (please see the section named New Designs & Techniques later in this account for a partial listing). Although the SSC dipole magnet was ready for industrial production well before 1993, the program was ended by Congress in that year and its magnets were never produced in quantity. The full complement (1740 plus spares) of RHIC magnets, however, was built: arc dipoles, quadrupoles, and sextupoles by industry, arc correctors and those fewer in number at BNL. The RHIC magnets have had a storied history---not a single dipole, quadrupole, or sextupole magnet has failed in the years that the machine has been operating beginning in 2000; one corrector coil has had to be replaced. Ramesh Gupta (shown in picture), Introduction, Magnetic Design and Analysis Animesh Jain, Magnet Theory and Magnetic Measurements Carl Goodzeit, Magnet Engineering Millicent (Penny) Ball and her colleagues developed and marketed, with DOE funding, a CD-ROM tutorial describing the design, engineering and building of superconducting magnets after the SSCL, where she had been working, was closed.A good description of the RHIC magnet system (and the other RHIC Collider systems) can be found in the comprehensive account published in the journal Nuclear Instruments and Methods in 2003. 5 This account is mostly about events that happened years ago. It is based on my recollect...