The article traces the attitude of various cultures through the centuries toward the hearing and speech handicapped. It outlines the early efforts to develop rehabilitative techniques for such handicaps, and describes a number of the pioneers in the field of education for the "deaf and dumb." The emergence of the opposing philosophies for training the hearing handicapped, the oral school and the signing school, and the influence these two had on the development of education for the deaf is described. The part played by basic research and the development of new instrumentation during the past 50 years in the solution of many of the problems of disordered communication is reviewed. Finally, the philosophic aims are described that led to the establishment of the Boys Town Institute for communicatively handicapped children.