The European Southern Observatory (ESO) manages the largest astronomical
ground-based optical and near-IR facility on the planet. There has been
a continuous growth in applications for ESO telescopes from the first
calls for proposals in the late 1960s. Typically one thousand
applications are now received per semester involving over 3000
astronomers world-wide. A brief history of the evolution of the
allocation process is presented along with a description of the
procedures currently in place at ESO for proposal selection and
telescope time allocation.