  This talk sketches the main milestones of the path towards cubic kilometer
neutrino telescopes. It starts with the first conceptual ideas in the late
1950s and describes the emergence of concepts for detectors with a realistic
discovery potential in the 1970s and 1980s. After the pioneering project DUMAND
close to Hawaii was terminated in 1995, the further development was carried by
NT200 in Lake Baikal, AMANDA at the South Pole and ANTARES in the Mediterranean
Sea. In 2013, more than half a century after the first concepts, IceCube has
discovered extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos and opened a new
observational window to the cosmos - marking a milestone along a journey which
is far from being finished.
