Dear Sir,I am grateful to Khosla and Ponsky for making the readership rediscover the usefulness of operating laparoscopes, in their nicely illustrated article. There are still many unused, forgotten, operating laparoscopes in the cupboards of most hospitals, which could be usefully recommissioned in these lean times. We had our own period of retro revival in the 1990s, when we described their usefulness in two publications. ‘Single-puncture gastrostomy’[1] and ‘One-puncture appendicectomy,’[2] and have used them ever since. The method works well in thin adults and in those whose mobile appendices reach the anterior abdominal wall. The main limitations are a zero degree telescope, with about equivalent fibrelight bundles of a 7 mm scope, to accommodate the instrument channel, which varies between 3.5 mm and 5 mm.[3] Admittedly the technology currently available for gel ports and instruments are much improved, allowing for much greater freedom of movement. Newer, longer, 30 degree or 45 degree–angled telescopes should improve vision further. The original single port, single-port access, single site, and single-puncture surgery precedes our own efforts by many years, and was pioneered by those who designed the operating telescope. Is the present single-port surgery trying to reinvent the wheel or just improve it?[3]