Seismic phase pickup is one of the most basic steps in the process of seismic data processing. When the earlier artificial pickup technology obviously could not satisfy the huge demand in seismic data processing,the technology of automatic pick-up of seismic phase emerged as a solution and has undergone a long development. Based on a global perspective,this paper reviews and summarizes the development and current status of automatic phase picking technology. According to the course of its development,the most basic STA-LTA method,AIC method,the widely used matched filter technique,the FAST method based on self-correlation blind search,the polarization analysis method for picking up S-wave,neural network method,and some new methods in recent years like the Filter Picking method and so on are respectively introduced. The advantages and limitations of each method are summarized and analyzed. This will pave the way for further development of automatic picking technology for seismic event in the future.