This paper is the first of three describing the monitoring of filament wound cylinders using Bragg grating sensors. Part I describes the technological issues and the development of specimens instrumented with embedded gratings and thermocouples. The aim is to monitor the temperature and strain changes during cylinder manufacture (see Part II) and in-service behaviour (see Part III). Specimens are filament wound glass reinforced epoxy composites, so two technological problems have to be solved: one is to collect data during fabrication and the second is to remove the specimen from the mandrel without damaging the sensors. These were accomplished by design of a specially adapted split mandrel and a rotating interface between the filament winding machine and the composite cylinder in fabrication. Immediately after sensor insertion it was possible to monitor the fabrication process, by collecting Bragg grating wavelength and temperature response, using this specially adapted tooling.