Abstract The first ten years of long-term potentiation (LTP) research are reviewed. Surprisingly, given the intensity of current interest, the discovery paper did not trigger a wave of follow-on experiments. Despite this, the initial work laid out what ultimately became standard questions and paradigms. The application of the then still novel hippocampal slice technique oriented LTP towards basic neuroscience, perhaps somewhat at the cost of lesser attention to its functional significance. The use of slices led to the discovery of the events that trigger the formation of LTP and provided some first clues about its extraordinary persistence.