Commission 42 began life as Photometric Double Stars in 1948 at the 7th General Assembly in Zurich, under the presidency of Zdenek Kopal. As early as 1961, then General Secretary Lukas Plaut recommended a merger between C42 and C26, Double Stars, one of the original 32 commissions going back to 1919-22 (first president Aitken, assistant director at Lick). C42 became Close Binary Stars in 1970, at the 14th GA in Brighton (the first one I attended). Table 1 shows the presidents of C42, and vice presidents, from when the office started, through the history of the Commission.