Serious phonetic study of North America languages started at the beginning of the 20th century. Within limits of available technology, aspects of speech articulation, aerodynamics and acoustics were investigated. One clear motivation was to understand how classes of sounds unfamiliar from study of better-known European and Asian languages were produced. Glottalized consonants and stops then referred to as ‘‘intermediate’’ (voiceless unaspirated) received particular attention. Nasal airflow, lip position in vowels, and tone and pitch accent were also investigated. Significant insights on relative timing were obtained, inter alia foreshadowing VOT measurement as a useful discriminator of laryngeal activity and revealing part of the mechanism by which ejective consonants are made. After the 1920’s, the idea of ‘‘psychologically real’’ phonemes which ignored phonetic differences became the ruling paradigm in American linguistics, contributing to a decline of interest in phonetic studies that basically lasted until around the 1980’s. When interest renewed, a new vision that phonetic patterns show regularities independent of phonemic structure guided research, and considerable attention was also paid to how indigenous American languages fit into overall phonetic typologies. Recent work is also often informed by concern for documentation of endangered languages and community interest in language revival.