Charged Particle Accelerators have played a key role in the field of basic & applied sciences. Over the last six to seven decades, there has been a tremendous growth in this area. Various types of accelerators, covering wide range of particles, energies & intensities, have appeared on the scene. The Linacs, Cyclotrons, Van de Graaffs, Tandems, Synchrotrons, Microtrons, RFQs, Storage Rings, Colliders etc have mushroomed everywhere. The availability of energy from these accelerators has already touched a level of a few TeV for the positively charged beams and a few hundreds of GeV for the negatively charged ones. There has also been a phenom-enological increase in the beam intensities available from them. Today, accelerators with beam intensities as high as a few kA, are being conceived and planned. Initially the accelerators were employed for pursuing basic research but now their uses have proliferated into the applied fields and as well as the industry. One of the main area which has contributed significantly to the development of accelerators is the physics & technology of vacuum. With the help of vacuum, it is now possible to sustain the accelerating electric fields of the order of a few hundred MV/m. This in turn has greatly reduced the sizes of the present day accelerators. Vacuum has also played an important role in minimizing the beam losses arising due to elastic & non elastic scattering processes. Beam quality, one of the most sought for parameters, has acquired a new life because of vacuum techniques only. This is especially true in case of Beam Colliders and Storage Rings. Over the last five to six decades, there have been rapid advancements in the techniques & practices being followed in vacuum. The field has established itself in such a way that it is now able to meet the stringent and diverse demands of all types of accelerators. With the availability of different types of pumps, new techniques, better materials, the level of attainable vacuum has gone up to 10~(-10) Torr and that too in accelerators, the circumference of which run into a few tens of kilometers. This talk is a brief review of the impact, the vacuum physics & technology has made on the accelerators.
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