Non-Evaporable Getters (NEG) entered the field of UHV technology with the advent of powder-coated gettering strips. Coated strips are particularly well suited to provide large, linear pumping for the conductance limited vacuum chambers of particle accelerators. An example of this application is the pumping system of the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) at CERN. The development of alloys of lower activation temperature (about 400 °C) may be seen as another major break-through in the NEG technology. In this case the activation may be achieved "passively" during the bakeout of a stainless steel vacuum system, resulting not only in a simplified solution (no need of electrical insulation, feedthroughs and power supply), but also in improved vacuum performance (larger pumping speed and capacity, lower ultimate pressure). The final stage of the NEG technology evolution has been reached with the recent development of thin getter films coated on the inner surfaces of a vacuum chamber. These films offer an even lower temperature of activation (180 °C), a feature which renders them applicable also to copper and aluminum structures. In addition, they provide large and evenly distributed pumping, suppress the thermal degassing of the underlying material and strongly reduce, after activation, both the degassing and the secondary electron yield induced by the surface bombardment. The impact of NEGs on the evolution of vacuum technology will be illustrated and the new possibilities offered by the thin film coatings will be reviewed with the help of some examples.