Abstract
Advances in the last 125 years that led to modern endoscopy have been punctuated by three essential technological inventions—electric light in 1879, which first made endoscopy possible; fiberoptics in 1956, which made endoscopy flexible and safe; and the charge coupled device in 1969, which made endoscopy electronic. The paper deals at some length with the development of fiberoptics. As the result of flexible safe endoscopes, the greatest advances in gastrointestinal diseases have taken place in only the last 45 years. This article sketches some of the truly revolutionary changes that have occurred in the last half century in the understanding and treatment of esophageal diseases, peptic ulcer, diseases of the colon, and biliary/pancreatic diseases, and not least in the development of minimal invasive surgery.
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