The journal of the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP) was launched in 1965 on the initiative of the first Director of the IAP Academician B.R. Lazarenko, who proposed the famous technique of the electrical discharge machining (EDM) of materials, the method that is that is nowadays appreciated and applied world-wide (ЭОМ, 2010, № 1–6). In the Welcome Address it was highlighted that it would be the first specialized edition dealing with the issues of new possibilities of application of electric energy in industry and agriculture that are opened due to usage of electrical discharge and electric fields. For over 50 years of its existence the journal has become a truly international publication, a proof of it being issues of its two identical versions – in Russian and in English. The first issue of the journal contained papers of experts in the respective areas. The then Editor-inchief , academician B.R. Lazarenko in his paper “New applications of electric energy in industry and agriculture” gave a brief overview of certain novel electrical processes for the national economy, emphasizing metallurgy, metal-working, chemistry, light and food industries, biology and agriculture, where, in his opinion there were a lot of underused opportunities. A co-author of the EDM technique N.I. Lazarenko dwelt on the enhancement of operational reliability and durability of machines and mechanisms, going into more details when describing coatings by the electricerosion doping of metals surfaces. Academician Yu.N. Petrov, a member of the Editorial Board, considered ways to increase durability of cutters of agricultural machines and illustrated them with the examples of application of electric-erosion doping by hard metals. The author of the present paper, a then deputy editor-in-chief, and his colleagues summarized the studies of the influence of electric fields on the heat-transfer in liquids and gases, the area that has become very dynamic and is turning into a separate new area of scientific-and-engineering activities.