A large number of papers and reports that have been published after the Nap
oli RPC97 workshop show an impressive progress in improving the RPC perform
ances and extending their use to new fields of application. This talk is an
attempt to summarize the state of the art at the beginning of the present
workshop as an introduction to the new results that will be presented. A di
scussion about the scaling of operating voltage and time resolution with th
e gas gap size will also be presented. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All r
ights reserved.