LHC Detectors and Early Physics

In this review I sketch the basic criteria and boundary conditions which have guided the design of the LHC detectors. The discussion will concentrate on the so-called general-purpose experiments, ATLAS and CMS. After an overview of the detector's characteristics and performance, I will elaborate on the expected measurements of hard processes, with emphasis on jet and vector boson production, i.e., tests of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and Electroweak Physics.