In this chapter, we will summarize some recently published texts by early sign language researchers since the mid-20th century. We have asked authors who published before 1980 in the United States and before 1990 in Europe to briefly describe their motivations for beginning research and the initial sociological and ideological contexts in which it took place.
The resulting recollections about the beginning of research on twelve different sign languages revealed a common curiosity and openness to explore language in new ways, the use of evolving technology for collecting and analyzing visual data, but some differences between the North American and European contexts also emerged. We see possible, interesting, similarities with the motivations that contributed to the founding of the Group for the Study of Spoken Communication (GSCP).