The measurement of galaxy redshifts has changed almost beyond recognition in
the past hundred years, progressing from night-long photographic exposures of
single targets in Slipher’s era to harvesting of tens of thousands of precision
CCD redshifts each night. Advances in detector technology and a new generation
of large telescopes have driven this change, which maps into a transformation
in our view of the expanding universe, from simple detection of linear flow to
exquisitely detailed measurement of a filigree of large scale structure
imprinted on a decelerating then acceleration expansion. This talk will focus
on the innovations that occurred along the way, some technical and some
involving the clever use of proxies for, or adjuncts to, collections of stars
such as supermassive black holes, supernovae, and gamma ray bursts.