High-energy electron and positron beams play an important role in the exploration of the properties of matter at molecular, atomic and subatomic levels. Adone, and the following electron-positron colliders, explored the structure of subatomic matter and helped to develop the standard model of elementary particles. The coherent photon beam of the X-ray free-electron laser, just now starting to operate, allows for the first time the exploration of atomic and molecular processes at their characteristic length and time scales of about 1 Ångstrom and 1 femtosecond, and single shot imaging of complex, non-crystalline structures like proteins. In this talk I review the extraordinary properties of electron-positron colliders and free-electron lasers, and discuss how these instruments are based on our understanding of complex phenomena in particle beams, collective and self-organization effects, which we started to study at the Frascati National Laboratory in the 1960s with a smaller accelerator, AdA, and later with Adone.