<story><title>A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-man-who-invented-vr-goggles-50-years-too-soon</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>janoc</author><text>The problem is that the guy didn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;invent&amp;quot; anything, more like had a farfetched idea and left all &amp;quot;the practical details&amp;quot; to others to work out. That&amp;#x27;s like saying that  Meliès invented space travel - he too had the idea of flying to the Moon in a gun projectile ...&lt;p&gt;It was only non-functioning mockup, at best, because the vacuum tube electronics of the era was simply incapable of producing a wireless device with those capabilities and weighing 140 (!!!) grams.&lt;p&gt;Compare that with the first actual working HMD which was the Sutherland&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Sword of Damocles&amp;quot; boom-mounted display from 1968.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It was George Meliès not Lumiere brothers who made the famous film. Thanks for correcting me.</text></comment>
<story><title>A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-man-who-invented-vr-goggles-50-years-too-soon</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Terr_</author><text>I wish more people knew&amp;#x2F;appreciated the incrementalism of progress.&lt;p&gt;A huge amount of constant &amp;quot;boring&amp;quot; percent-point improvement work or price-shifts are required to unlock the interesting changes, and often the people and companies associated with those new discoveries and ways of doing things are &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; really the first at all, but rather the lucky or the ruthless.</text></comment>