In this paper, we recount the history of artificial viscosity, beginning with its origin in previously unpublished and unavailable documents, continuing on to current research and ending with recent work describing its physical basis that suggests new directions for improvement. We focus on the underlying ideas that recognize the finiteness of scale and of measurement. Los Alamos report LA-UR-22-20270Keywords Shocks • Artificial Viscosity • Finite Scale Theory Preface "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." (Anonymous)We celebrate the centennial anniversary of Richard Becker's seminal paper on shock structure [4]. Becker's paper is most often cited for his clever solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for the planar shock. However Becker's main purpose was to cast doubt on the ability of the Navier-Stokes equations to model shock structure. Becker concluded from his solution that a shock would be about one molecular mean free path wide, violating the assumptions under which the Navier-Stokes equations are derived from the Boltzmann equation [24].