The First CISM-IFToMM Symposium on Theory and Practice of Robots and Manipulators was held on Sept. 5-8, 1973, in Udine, Italy, not long after IFToMM had been founded in 1969. The first ROMANSY, or Ro.Man.Sy., as the Symposium used to be referred to, marks the beginning of a long-lasting partnership between two international institutions, CISM, the Centre International des Sciences Mécaniques and IFToMM, the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science.