This is the first of three volumes collecting the original and now classic works in topology written in the 50s-60s. The original methods and constructions from these works are properly documented for the first time in this book. No existing book covers the beautiful ensemble of methods created in topology starting from approximately 1950, that is, from Serre's celebrated "Singular homologies of fibre spaces."This is the translation of the Russian edition published in 2005 with one entry (Milnor's lectures on the h-cobordism) omitted.