Comparison of Different Methods for Transverse Emittance Measurement and Recent Results from LEP

The knowledge of its position and angular transverse distributions is of utmost interest to assess the good behaviour of a beam within an accelerator. After a short reminder of beam "emittance" definitions, a review is made of various measurement techniques used so far both in single pass machines and colliders. Results of measurements made at CERN in the future LHC injection complex and in LEP are presented and discussed.