《纤维丛(第3版)》讲述了：The notion of a fibre bundle first arose out of questions posed in the 1930s on the topology and geometry of manifolds. By the year 1950, the definition of fibre bundle had been clearly formulated, the homotopy classification of fibre bundles achieved, and the theory of characteristic classes of fibre bundles developed by several mathematicians: Chern, Pontrjagin, Stiefel, and Whitney. Steenrod's book, which appeared in 1950, gavea coherent treatment of the subject up to that time.

About 1955, Miinor gave a construction ora universal fibre bundle for any topological group. This construction is also included in Part I along with an elementary proof that the bundle is universal.