What happens when mistakes often occur? Taunted and even punished for such a mistake if possible! But the opposite has happened in the tech world! An accidental mistake, it initially failed but the end result turned out to be spectacular. With such a stunning result you still don’t get it! We are talking about the mouse. Gee, yes, you know the mouse search failed at first!
Let’s start with the mouse itself. The year was 1960 and the man was Douglas Engelbart. Douglas was studying electrical engineering at the Stanford Research Institute at the time. He felt that people could not use computers properly. It so happened that in those days a large device like a joy stick was used in the name of mouse. Imagine what that would be like! Douglas put his engineering mind to work and created a new product called ‘Bug’.
The ‘bug’ had two wheels that were used to control the cursor that appeared on the computer. How great a product the ‘Bug’ was can be gauged from the fact that it was used by NASA in 1966. Douglas also received his patent in November 1970, but under the name Stanford Research Institute. He performed it in front of a thousand people in San Francisco with another partner, Bill English. The story sounded like a fairy tale, but within five years Engelbart stopped receiving financial support. Most of his team members left Stanford. Among them was Bill English, who started working at Xerox.
A few years later, Bill met Steve Jobs at Xerox. Steve was so excited to hear the mouse idea that he told his team to immediately stop whatever they were doing and relaunch the mouse as an Apple product. However, this did not happen because the patent was held by the Stanford Research Institute. Even poor Douglas Engelbart got nothing. But further he became a rat on his design. If Engelbart had found Steve Jobs’ side, the mouse would have reached our homes years ago.
Now comes AR/VR stands for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Where is today, needless to say. Facebook’s parent company Meta is set to launch its own universe, thanks to AR/VR. It is not possible to imagine Metaverse without an AR/VR headset. The market for Apple’s VR headset is also very hot. The first 3D headset was made in 1957. The name of the device was Sensorama. Which was created by Morton Heilig. In fact, Morton was creating a device for cinema lovers that could provide a live experience. The visionary Morton wanted to bring today’s 4D experience back to the sixties. That means if water falls on the screen, you can feel the wetness on the seat itself.
Morton built the device and approached the famous car manufacturer Henry Ford with high hopes. Ford flatly refused. Frustrated, Morton Heilig threw Sensorama into the garden of his home. Three years later, Heilig made some changes to his product and patented it as the Telesphere Mask. This device later became the basis of new age headsets. But the sad thing was that his father Heilig could not become a part of this industry. You know today the virtual reality market has become 170 billion dollars. And constantly growing.