Eclipsing binary light curves have provided the ‘royal road’ (Russell 1948) to fundamental astrophysical information on stars. If radial velocities of the components and a reliable colour/temperature/flux relation are available, parallaxes may be determined and compared with direct measures, e.g. by Hipparcos. Accuracies of existing measures are considered and aspects of the development of this and other methods of distance determination reviewed. Roles for multiwavelength techniques (e.g. VLBA, broad-spectrum photometry) are noted. The recovery of information on new planets orbiting remote stars by transit phenomena will be looked into within this context.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html