On the 50th anniversary of starting up the first industrial FCC installation. The 5th World Congress on Catalytic Cracking, held in August, 1999, in New Orleans (USA) was especially held on this data. The first FCC (Fluid Catalytic Cracking) installation with a "fluidized" bed of microbead catalyst began industrial operation in 1949 at Standard Oil (now Exxon) refineries in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA; a demonstration installation was started up on July 23, 1942. It was created in stiff competition with the existing TCC (Thermofor Catalytic Cracking) process with a moving bed of bead catalyst (granule size of 2.5 - 6 mm) developed by Socony Vacuum (now Mobile Oil). the first semi-industrial TCC installation started operation in 1941 at the Paulsboro, New Jersey refinery. At the end of the Second World War, the total output of these plants was 14.5 million tons/year. Prior to 1941, installations with a stationary bed of pelleted catalyst developed wit combined Socony Vacuum and Houdry Process technology was used in the US. For this reason, the first industrial cat cracking plant actually began operation in 1936 in Paulsboro; in 1940, their total capacity was approximately 6.6 million tons/year. However, the complexity of the instrumentation - the large number of units for reaction - regeneration cycles -accelerated the development of TCC technology. The idea of TCC technology first appeared in 1935, also at Socony Vacuum. During the Second World War, the high demand for aviation fuel produced by cracking of diesel cuts wit subsequent mixing of the fuel with alkylate (octane number equal to 100), obtained from the product of catalytic cracking - wet gas - also accelerated development of this process.