In the beginning of the sixties the application of mass-spectrometry in identification and structure elucidation of more complex organic compounds started. Since then the technique has developed to a powerful and versatile, maybe even more then NMR, tool for this purpose.
This booklet is a paraphrase of an earlier release back in 1992. When the new high-resolution mass-spectrometer was purchased in the beginning of 1999 and some years before that the purchase of a GC/MS apparatus more and more the need was there to rewrite the existing manual. In this way more attention is paid to the several, partial new, ionization techniques and alternative ways to separate masses, as there are TOF (time of flight), Ion Trap and sector analysis.