  The present article is based upon an invited talk delivered at the occasion
of the inauguration of the 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT)
which took place in Devasthal (ARIES, Uttarakhand, India) on 21st of March
2023. We present hereafter a short history of the liquid mirror telescopes and
in particular of the 4m ILMT which is the first liquid mirror telescope
entirely dedicated to astrophysical observations. We discuss a few preliminary
scientific results and illustrate some direct CCD images taken during the first
commissioning phase of the telescope. We invite the reader to refer to the
series of ILMT poster papers published in these same proceedings of the BINA3
workshop for more details about the instrument, operation, first observations,
performance and scientific results.
