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+\chapter{Introduction}
+This thesis describes the result and process of my work during my
+Master's assignment. In these pages, I will try to introduce the world
+of hardware descriptions, the world of functional languages and
+compilers, and present the compiler that will connect these worlds and
+sets a first step towards making hardware programming on the whole
+easier, more maintainable and generally more pleasant.
+
+In the first chapter, we will sketch the context for this research.
+The current state and history of hardware description languages will be
+briefly discussed, as well as the state and history of functional
+programming. Since we're not the first to have merged these approaches,
+a number of other functional hardware description languages are briefly
+described.