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Very-high energy (VHE) gamma quanta contribute only a minuscule fraction -below one per million - to the flux of cosmic rays. Nevertheless, being neutralparticles they are currently the best "messengers" of processes from therelativistic/ultra-relativistic Universe because they can be extrapolated backto their origin. The window of VHE gamma rays was opened only in 1989 by theWhipple collaboration, reporting the observation of TeV gamma rays from theCrab nebula. After a slow start, this new field of research is now rapidlyexpanding with the discovery of more than 150 VHE gamma-ray emitting sources.Progress is intimately related with the steady improvement of detectors andrapidly increasing computing power. We give an overview of the early attemptsbefore and around 1989 and the progress after the pioneering work of theWhipple collaboration. The main focus of this article is on the development ofexperimental techniques for Earth-bound gamma-ray detectors; consequently, moreemphasis is given to those experiments that made an initial breakthrough ratherthan to the successors which often had and have a similar (sometimes evenhigher) scientific output as the pioneering experiments. The considered energythreshold is about 30 GeV. At lower energies, observations can presently onlybe performed with balloon or satellite-borne detectors. Irrespective of thestormy experimental progress, the success story could not have been called asuccess story without a broad scientific output. Therefore we conclude thisarticle with a summary of the scientific rationales and main results achievedover the last two decades.

Very-high energy gamma-ray astronomy: A 23-year success story in high-energy astroparticle physics