Many textbooks and review papers are devoted to plasmonics based on a selection of the numerous bibliography. But none describes the details of the first culmination of plasmonics in 1968, when surface plasmons became a field of optics. The coupling of light with the surface plasmon leads to the surface plasmon polariton (SPP). Therefore, the authors chose to associate historical insight (not avoiding a personal touch), a modern mathematical formulation of the excitation of the SPP by attenuated total reflection (ATR), considered as well understood since decades, and experimental applications since 1969, including recent developments.