Although progress was made from the 1920s to the 1960s, this was not the best period in which to scientifically study native lignin macromolecular configuration. This was not only because of the serious technological limitations encountered during this period relative to today, but also because there was no indication that phenolic radical-radical coupling could be controlled in any specific manner. Accordingly, with the best of the intentions, the structural depictions envisaged for lignins and how they were formed were highly speculative at that time to say the very least. In any event, this ultimately led to two widely divergent views of lignin structure from the Freudenberg and Forss laboratories, respectively.