including the Dataglove (along with Tom Zimmerman) and the EyePhone head mounted display. They were the first company to sell Virtual Reality goggles (EyePhone 1 $9400; EyePhone HRX $49,000) and gloves ($9000). A major development in the area of virtual reality haptics.

In 1968 Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull created the first VR / AR head mounted display (Sword of Damocles) that was connected to a computer and not a camera.

1838 : The stereoscope (Charles Wheatstone) 1849 : The lenticular stereoscope (David Brewster) 1939 : The View-Master (William Gruber)

the Ultimate Display: a head mounted display (HMD) attached to a computer which enabled the wearer to see a virtual world.

The Sensorama consisted on the following elements: A viewing screen within an enclosed booth which displayed stereoscopic images. Oscillating fans Audio output (speakers) Devices which emitted smells

Further artistic examples could be found in the avant-garde work of French playwright Antonin Artaud who considered illusion and reality to be one and the same.

One reason for its early use in spinal surgery is that the spine’s rigid structure makes it easy to link computerized images correctly with the body.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are closely related. In both, you can take part in a computerized virtual world that appears in front of you, whether it’s on your phone screen or a headset.But there’s one really important difference. Virtual reality is immersive. That means it allows you to dive in to a fully make-believe world, with sight and sound. While you can engage with it and it might even look realistic or lifelike, virtual reality exists entirely apart from anything real.

What makes augmented reality special and more useful in medicine is that it merges virtual images with the real world, including real objects and real people. That means your surgeon, doctor, or nurse could see things in front of them using augmented reality that they otherwise couldn’t -- like the veins running through your arm, a broken bone, brain tumor, X-ray, or health records -- without taking their attention away from you to look at some other screen.

You’ve heard of virtual reality, but how about augmented reality? The name might sound unfamiliar, but chances are you may have used it and not realized it. You may have even played a game that’s built on it. A popular example is Pokémon Go, a smartphone app that lets you go around your neighborhood or community “catching” wild Pokémon that look on the screen as though they’ve popped up right in front of you.

urgeons, using AR headsets such as Microsoft’s HoloLens, are able to see key patient data and digital images (e.g., details of a patient’s aneurysm) superimposed over the surgeon’s field of view.

With a user base that is expected to grow beyond 1 billion by 2020 and reach a compound annual growth rate of 151.93% between 2019 and 2025, AR is a bona fide technological powerhouse — and when combined with VR, it has the potential to disrupt some of our leading industries. According to Goldman Sachs, commercial spending for AR and VR will surpass consumer spending for these technologies by 2020 and grow to a projected $80-billion market by 2025.

Simply put, augmented reality is the integration of digital information (e.g., computer-generated display, sound, text and effects) to enhance or “augment” the user's real-world experience in real-time.