We review the history of photoacoustics from the discovery in 1880 that modulated light produces acoustic waves to the current time, when the pulsed variant of the discovery is fast developing into a powerful biomedical imaging modality. We trace the meandering and fascinating passage of the effect along several conceptual and methodological trajectories to several variants of the method, each with its set of proposed applications. The differences in mechanisms between the intensity modulated

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... fect and the pulsed version are described in detail. We also learn the several names given to the effect, and trace the modern-day divide in nomenclature.