It might sound a little astonishing but the Apple watch is not the first in the field of wearable technology. In fact, wearable technology is anything but new. Like everything else in the world right now, the only “new” aspect is the digitization of wearable technology.
So when did it all begin? Let’s dig deep into the history of wearable technology :
- It started with the abacus ring, a 17th-century Chinese device that allowed bean counters to do calculations without having to write them down. This ring was the forefather of wearable technology
- Around almost the same time pocket watches were coming into usage in Europe
- In 1907 a German inventor Julis Neubronner invented a somewhat primitive form of the modern day GoPro. His small lightweight camera was capable of capturing single shots and was strapped to homing pigeons in order to take aerial photos
- 1961: Edward O Thorpe and Claude Shannon hid a timing device in a shoe which could somewhat accurately predict where the ball would land on a roulette table and the number was communicated to the gambler through radio waves
- The 1980s saw a mass production of microchips and Steve Mann began his Eye Tap project-a kind of forefather to Google glasses
