I will review the scientific drivers and technical progress in our quest to
chart the expansion history of the Universe and the evolution of galaxies.
The story takes us from the modest surveys of a few hundred galaxies beyond
the Virgo supercluster through the ambitious campaigns of SDSS and 2dF to the
Keck and VLT surveys of the highest redshift systems. A new generation of
panoramic surveys is upon us and I will conclude with a description of the
goals of the Subary Prime Focus Spectrograph - an instrument capable of
measuring 100,000 redshifts per night.