The growing national interest in hypersonic missions in the early 1970s demanded experimentation with high enthalpy flow field; such that the high temperature and real gas effects characterizing hypersonic flows are considered. While the pre-heating of the test gas in hypersonic wind tunnels is sufficient to avoid liquefaction in the expanded flow, the simulation of high total enthalpies associated with the hypersonic flow required impulse facilities like shock tunnel; where the test gas to be expanded to the required hypersonic Mach number is compressed and heated by means of shock wave propagation in a shock tube. The systematic experimental study of shock waves and shock dominated phenomena in IISc, Bangalore begun with the installation of its first shock tube in 1972. The laboratory was effectively instituted, as High Enthalpy Aerodynamics Laboratory (HEAL), with the commissioning of the country’s first hypersonic shock tunnel HST-1 in the year 1973. A photograph of HST-1 is given in Fig. 1. The shock tunnel consisted of an aluminum shock tube, 8.4 m long and 50 mm in diameter. The end of the shock tube was connected to a conical nozzle, whose throat area can be varied so as to simulate Mach numbers ranging from 4 to 13 in the test section of 300 mm × 300 mm cross section ending into a dump tank [1]. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.