This paper attempts to present a comprehensive tutorial survey of the development of efficient modulation techniques for bandlimited channels, such as telephone channels. After a history of advances in commercial high-speed modems and a discussion of theoretical limits, it reviews efforts to optimize two-dimensional signal constellations and presents further elaborations of uncoded modulation. Its principal emphasis, however, is on coded modulation techniques, in which there is an explosion of current interest, both for research and for practical application. Both block-coded and trellis-coded modulation are covered, in a common framework. A few new techniques are presented.