Hand recognition is one of the popular biometry technologies, especially in physical access control and time and attendance monitoring. Over the years, researches have been carried out in developing different techniques to identify the hand images. Yet, there is little literature work compiling the previous hard work on hand recognition researches in the past four decades. Firstly, we outline the introduction on biometrics. Then, we present the evolution of hand recognition as in the historical perspective. As in the third section, we study on the technology overview of system operation. We compare various approaches done in three categories, namely hand geometry, hand contour and palm print. After that, we further discuss the performance of the methodology as stated in the comparison. Lastly, we conclude our survey with future development. Thereby, this paper serves the purpose as a gateway for hand recognition literature survey to the novel or interested researchers.