The fundamental theorems on the asymptotic behavior of eigenvalues,
inverses, and products of banded Toeplitz matrices and Toeplitz
matrices with absolutely summable elements are derived in a tutorial
manner. Mathematical elegance and generality are sacrificed for conceptual
simplicity and insight in the hope of making these results available
to engineers lacking either the background or endurance to attack
the mathematical literature on the subject. By limiting the generality
of the matrices considered, the essential ideas and results can be conveyed
in a more intuitive manner without the mathematical machinery
required for the most general cases. As an application the results are
applied to the study of the covariance matrices and their factors of
linear models of discrete time random processes.