No one suspected in the mid-1970s that endoscopic time mastering video arthroscopy would develop so swiftly into the class of operative procedures known as arthroscopic surgery. The older generation had to overcome the problems of scopic visualization of the joints while working abstractly "off the screen" without looking directly at the joint itself. In German-speaking countries, arthroscopy was limited in the 1970s to a few operators who faced the need to undergo a "natural" learning process in performing arthroscopic surgery but were not familiar with diagnostic arthroscopy. Unlike their predecessors, they could no longer follow the natural process of "learning by doing." Video technology was not available.