Cecil Czerkinsky first described ELISpot in 1983 as a new way to quantify the production of an antigen-specific immunoglobulin by hybridoma cells.
In 1988, Czerkinsky developed an ELISA spot assay that quantified the secretion of a lymphokine by T cells.
In the same year, dual-color ELISpot was combined with computer imaging for the first time, which allowed for the enumeration and analysis of spots.
1988 also marked the first use of membrane-bottomed plates for performing these assays.