**1. Introduction**

The twenty‐first century clinical Audiology has not been very creative in terms of novel breakthroughs, since the majority of clinical novelties, we routinely used today, were discovered in the 1970s and the 1980s. The trend, which can be observed in the last few decades, is an amelioration of our technological approaches/strategies to restore an impaired hearing function with hearing aids, middle ear prostheses, and cochlear implants. New and novel procedural developments have not surfaced yet to clinical practice.

A Scopus literature search within the last 5 years shows, for example, that there are developments in procedures related to (i) cortical‐evoked potentials, such as the speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses (see the relative chapter in this volume) and (ii) various protocol developments in the area of steady‐state responses (ASSR), with applications to the newly charted area of electrically evoked SSRs [1, 2]. Important aspects of novel hearing restoration strategies including gene therapy [3], stem cells [4, 5], and related intracochlear distribution nanotechnologies [6, 7] are still at best in a preclinical phase.

From my personal experience as an educator, I have found that very few of our colleagues and graduate students have a clear idea about the origins of Audiology. This book deals with the latest advances in this field, which can only make sense if we recall briefly our point of origin.
