Sir James Dyson The Father Of Google Glass?

We are pretty sure you know Dyson by its rather unusual range of home appliances that range from fans to vacuum cleaners. But there is more than meets the eye with this company. More than ten years ago, Mr James Dyson – company founder and lead inventor designed and patented what it now seems to be the world’s  first pair of smart-glasses. What’s more  interesting is that Mr Dyson’s glasses named Halo bear a striking resemblance with Google Glass.

Way back in 2001 the Dyson company started its journey into wearable technology and set up to create an augmented reality headset meant to be portable and controlled using voice commands. A small walkman-like box provided the computing for the device that was obviously bulky and and tangle of wires. Quite impressing considering we’re talking about the 2000s when microchips, transistors and miniaturizing techniques were nowhere near what we’re accustomed to see in a $100 smartphone today.  Still the rectangular shaped box that controlled all Halo’s function was small enough to fit in your jeans pocked.

Halo featured two monitors that were placed near the user’s temples. All content was projected on a prism that then created a virtual image at around one meter in front of your eyes. The Dyson wearable gadget had similar functions and features that many of take for granted from a regular smartphone today.  So here you have it, another example that rediscovering the past is sometimes better than starting from scratch with a new idea.

Although the Halo project was shut down 3 years later in 2004 like many others futuristic gadgets the company has designed, there is no reason to believe they were actual failures. Who know when we’ll see them implemented in another form in our daily lives. Did you know Dyson also designed a diesel trap for engines that used cyclone technology or a fuel cell that could enable vacuums to run on oxygen and hydrogen? We bet you didn’t!