Abstract
Events and discoveries in oxygen monitoring over the past two centuries are presented as the background from which oximetry of the human retina evolved. Achievements and the people behind them are discussed, showing parallels between the work in tissue measurements and later in the eye. Developments in the two-wavelength technique for oxygen saturation measurements in retinal vessels are shown to exploit the forms of imaging technology available over time. The last section provides a short summary of the recent research in retinal diseases using vessel oximetry.