Hitachi Xybernaut Poma Wearable PC
I promise, what is described in this slide was an actual device.
Long before Google Glass, there was the Xybernaut Poma, an early entry into the head-mounted display market. It promised a hands-free way of accessing the internet: just strap a keyboard to your forearm, clip the main housing to your belt, and wear the display over your head. Unfortunately, when you wore it, a thick metal bar would run across your forehead and a dark screen appeared before one eye as if you were wearing an eyepatch. The headgear ran Windows CR and was powered by a Hitachi 129MHz RISC processor with 32MB of RAM. Content was viewed on a miniature screen with a measly 800 x 600-pixel resolution.
On paper, the Xybernaut read like a product from the future—something that could replace your phone and allow you to browse the web via IE, watch videos on Windows Media Player, and edit Word documents. In practice, it was slow, bulky, and distracting. Did I mention it cost $1,500 when it arrived in 2002?
