especially to tag the presence of b quarks within particle jets. It was rst introduced in the DELPHI experiment at LEP but soon followed by all collider - periments to date. The long expected t quark discovery was possible mainly with the help of the CDF silicon vertex tracker, providing the b quark information. In the beginning of the 21st century the new LHC experiments are beginning to take 2 shape. CMS with its 206m of silicon area is perfectly suited to cope with the high luminosity environment. Even larger detectors are envisioned for the far future, like the SiLC project for the International Linear Collider. Silicon sensors matured from small 1in. single- sided devices to large 6in. double-sided, double metal detectors and to 6in. single-sided radiation hard sensors.