As a new degree of freedom of photons, orbital angular momentum has been widely used in various fields of optical research since it was proposed in 1992. This study briefly reviews some important research progress of orbital angular momentum beams in the past 30 years, including the preparation and detection of orbital angular momentum beams, spiral-phase contrast imaging, remote sensing detection of object spins, and photo-induced rotation, etc. Through these work, it can be found that the orbital angular momentum beam has significant advantages and huge application value in many fields due to its unique spiral phase structure. At present, the structured light field represented by orbital angular momentum beams has become one of the hotspots in the field of optical research. Some new properties and potential applications of orbital angular momentum beams, such as space-time vortexes and high-dimensional quantum information processing are still waiting to be excavated and explored by scientists. It is believed that the next few years will be a critical period for the development of orbital angular momentum beams, and it will be full of opportunities.