Historical aspects of respiratory reflexes from the lungs and airways are reviewed, up until about 10 years ago. For most of the 19^th century the possible reflex inputs into the 'respiratory centre', the position of which had been identified, were very speculative. There was little concept of reflex control of the pattern of breathing. Then in 1868 Breuer published his paper on the 'self-steering of breathing via the vagus nerves'. For the first time this established the role of vagal inflation and deflation reflexes in determining the pattern of breathing. Head later extended the work of Breuer's and Kratschmer laid a similar basis for reflexes from the nose and larynx. 50-60 years later the development of the thermionic valve and the oscilloscope allowed recording action potentials from single nerve fibres in the vagus. In 1933 Adrian showed that slowly adapting pulmonary stretch receptors (SARs) were responsible for the inflation reflex. Later, Knowlton and Larrabee described rapidly adapting receptors (RARs) and showed that they mediated deep augmented breaths and the deflation reflex. Still later it was established that RARs were, at least in part, responsible for cough. In 1954 Paintal began his study of C-fibre receptors (J-receptors) work greatly extended by the Coleridges. Since about 10 years ago, when the field of this review stops, there has been an explosion of research on lung and airway receptors, many aspects of which are dealt with in other papers in this series.