It has now been 10 years since the successful start up and first lasing of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) free-electron laser (FEL) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and since that time more FELs have come on line and much progress has been made. Exquisite control of the beam properties well beyond the initial performance goals has been achieved, but there is still room to improve. Many techniques have been developed to generate multiple pulses, short pulses, and achieve improvements in wavelength stability and longitudinal coherence. This presentation will first provide a brief history of the FEL with particular focus on the single-pass FEL and then will go on to describe some of the methodologies that have been developed to enhance the performance of these devices well beyond their original performance goals.