In this review, I give a summary of the history of our understanding of
gravitational waves and how compact binaries were used to transform their
status from mathematical artefact to physical reality. I also describe the
types of compact (stellar) binaries that LISA will observe as soon as it is
switched on. Finally, the status and near future of LIGO, Virgo and GEO are
discussed, as well as the expected detection rates for the Advanced detectors,
and the accuracies with which binary parameters can be determined when BH/NS
inspirals are detected.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. To be published in "Evolution of
compact binaries", editors: Linda Schmidtobreick, Matthias Schreiber and
Claus Tapper
