In most aspects of life, technology has played a key role in improving lives and advancing our capability. Throughout all aspects of surgery, minimally invasive techniques such as endoscopy have been successfully adopted and implemented, benefiting surgeons, patients, and indirectly, society as a whole. After being described as a surgical technique by Johann Mikulicz in 1881, it took nearly a century for endoscopy to gain wide acceptance as a reliable surgical technique. German surgeon Kurt Semm is now credited as the father of modern endoscopy, but as he was developing techniques such as laparoscopic appendectomy in the 1960s and 1970s, the validity of his work was viewed with deep skepticism.