Black Holes: from Speculations to Observations

Abstract

This paper provides a brief review of the history of our understanding and knowledge of black holes. Starting with early speculations on ``dark stars'' I discuss the Schwarzschild "black hole" solution to Einstein's field equations and the development of its interpretation from "physically meaningless" to describing the perhaps most exotic and yet "most perfect" macroscopic object in the universe. I describe different astrophysical black hole populations and discuss some of their observational evidence. Finally I close by speculating about future observations of black holes with the new generation of gravitational wave detectors.