Charles Dotter and Melvin Judkins performed in 1964 the first percutaneous transluminal angioplasty, dilating a stenosis of the superficial femoral artery without open surgery through the successive introduction of increasingly larger-bore catheters. The therapeutic principle — opening an obstruction from inside the vessel — proved revolutionary, but the American surgical community rejected it for years. The technique was adopted earlier in Europe. That same idea ended up reshaping all of cardiovascular practice. Dotter is the conceptual founder of interventional cardiology.