A brief history of the observation of the onset of deconfinement-the beginning of the creation of quark-gluon plasma in nucleus-nucleus collisions with increasing collision energy-is presented. It starts with the measurement of the hadron mass spectrum and Hagedorn's hypothesis of the limiting temperature of hadronic matter (the Hagedorn temperature). Then the conjecture that the Hagedorn temperature is the phase transition temperature was formulated with the crucial Hagedorn participation. It was confirmed by the observation of the onset of deconfinement in lead-lead collisions at the CERN SPS energies.
Hadron Mass Spectrum and the Hagedorn TemperatureA history of multi-particle production started with the discoveries of hadrons, first in cosmic-ray experiments and soon after in experiments using beams of particles produced in accelerators. Naturally, the first hadrons, discovered in collisions of cosmic-ray particles, were the lightest ones, pion, kaon and . With the rapid advent of particle accelerators new particles were uncovered almost daily. About 1,000 hadronic states are known so far. Their density in mass .m/ increases approxi-