Country of Origin: United States of America
Dimensions:
Other: 1 ft. 5 in. diameter x 5 in. tall x 1 ft. 1 in. wide (43.2 x 12.7 x 33cm)
Materials:
Armature - Styrofoam on which it is mounted
Frame - metal
Headphones - metal, plastic
This is a hand-built, prototype headset for one of the first "Virtual Reality" displays ever built. Developed at the NASA-Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California and completed in 1985, it was intended to test concepts of presenting visual information to pilots or astronauts, by creating a computer-generated image of an artificial reality. Sensors tracked the movement of the wearer's head, so that the images displayed moved accordingly, as if he or she were looking out a real cockpit during a flight.
James Humphries donated this to the Museum in 1997.
Gift of James Humphries
