Spectral measurement technology has been widely used in non-destructive test, geological prospecting, agriculture and many other fields, and the related technology and devices have achieved great progress in recent years. So spectral measurement technology has developed rapidly in recent years. Based on practical application requirements, the development history of spectral measurement technology was introduced comprehensively and the main spectral measurements including traditional, computational and multiplexing were summarized. The theory and implementation of computational tomography, compressive sensing, Fourier transform, Hadamard transform were introduced in detail and corresponding advantages and disadvantages were pointed out. At last, the problems that need to be solved urgently in spectral measurement technology were analyzed and summarized, and the future development of spectral measurement methods was prospected.