The following overview is divided roughly into three sections. The first section covers the period from the late 1920s when the first liquid phase synthesis was first conducted until about 1960 when the interest in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) declined because of the renewed view of an abundance of petroleum at a low price. The second period includes the activity that resulted from the oil shortage due to the Arab embargo in 1972 and covers from about 1960 to 1985 when the period of gloomy projections for rapidly increasing prices for crude had faded away. The third section covers the period from when the interest in FTS was no longer driven by the projected supply and/or price of petroleum but by the desire to monetize stranded natural gas and/or terminate flaring the gas associated with petroleum production and other environmental concerns (1985 to date). These sections are followed by a brief overview of the current status of the scientific and engineering understanding of slurry bubble column reactors.