The History of Virtual Reality

In mid 1950s visionary cinematographer Morton H Eilig built a single user console called Sensorama that included a stereoscopic display, fans, or emitters, stereo speakers and a moving chair. This enabled the user watch television in three dimensional ways.
In 1961, Philco Corporation engineers developed the first HMD known as the Headsight. The helmet consisted of a video screen along with a tracking system. Then they linked to a closed circuit camera system. Then somewhat similar HMD was used for helicopter pilots. While flying in the dark these were of great help.

In 1965, a computer scientist named Ivan Sutherland envisioned what he called the “Ultimate Display.” After using this display a person imagines the virtual world very similar to the real world.

During 1966, an HMD was built by Sutherland, which was tethered to a computer system.

I came across the following article on
http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html on the 12th November 2009.