The origin of the modern era of thin film technology is closely linked to the development of vacuum technology. However, the more recent emergence of thin film science as an identifiable field of investigation parallels the development and adaptation of surface structural and chemical probes to provide in situ real-time atomic-scale data during film growth. The ready accessibility of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy also played an important role. The next step in this evolutionary process, which is occurring right now, is the addition of theory and modeling as standard approaches, used in combination with the above physical tools, to complement, design, and analyze experiments. The beautifully hierarchical complexity associated with thin film microstructural and surface morphological evolution, which arises from a diverse set of competitive kinetic instabilities operating on very different time and length scales, assures that thin film science and technology will remain a vital and exciting field long into the future. While the present focus of the field is on film growth from the vapor phase, there is an increasingly strong resurgent interest, driven by nanotechnology and the desire to extend self-organization to higher spatial orders, in film growth from solution. (C) 2003 American Vacuum Society.