This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the First International Workshop on Implementing Automata, WIA'96, held in London, Ontario, Canada, in August 1996. The volume presents 13 revised full papers together with an introduction and survey. The papers explore the use of software tools in formal language theory; various issues involved in the implementation of automata of all types are discussed. As the first book focusing on implementing automata, this collection of research papers defines the state of the art in the area. Generally speaking, the book advocates the practice of theory in computer science.