The experimental physics programme of PEP and PETRA is presented. The data from 11 independent experiments are collated according to subject matter and compared with theory. The author starts with a brief history of e⁺e^- interactions and then goes on to give brief technical details of the two accelerators and the 11 experimental detectors. The physics of hadron production is considered and the production yield per event of all hadrons detected is given in convenient tabular form. The confrontation of the measurements of hadron production with QCD theory is considered, together with the status of the understanding of fragmentation. A section is devoted to the electroweak interaction and results are presented from an analysis combining the data from the various experiments on lepton and quark pair production.