  After pioneering works on hypernuclei, strangeness production mechanisms have
been studied in hadron collisions and photoreactions in the sixties. Recent
experiments at SATURNE and COSY, in the hadronic sector, as well as ELSA and
JLab, in the electromagnetic sector, have confirmed our basic ideas on the
reaction mechanisms. In the near future, strangeness production at JLab, HERMES
and COMPASS may prove to be a powerful tool to study hadronic matter.
