Positrons are often associated with high-energy physics and accelerators, and hence are thought to occupy the realm of basic science. Less well known is the important role they play in materials science after it was discovered in the second half of the 1960s that the results of positron annihilation experiments in solids are strongly dependent on the history of the sample. Following some 25 years of research and development in the laboratory, positron annihilation is now finding its way into industry. This was illustrated by the first Europhysics Industrial Workshop (EIW) on Industrial Applications of Positron Annihilation (10-12 March 1994), where contributions could roughly be divided into three categories: defects in metals, defects in semiconductor materials and devices, and industrial applications of positron tomography.