Jewish Invention Myths: Virtual Reality
Getting back to ‘jewish invention’ myths we have the claim that jews invented ‘Virtual Reality’ (hereafter VR) that has been made by Kathyrn Bernheimer at ‘Boulder Jewish News’. (1)
Bernheimer gives little detail to substantiate her claim, but it almost certainly refers to Morton Heilig’s patent for his ‘Sensorama’ stereoscope viewer which was granted in 1962 but which he had potentially developed as early as 1957.
Heiling was indeed jewish and was a cinematographer working in Hollywood and his ‘Sensorama’ is indeed seen as an early VR system (2) even if it was a complete failure commercially. (3)
The problem with Bernheimer’s claim is that Heiling’s ‘Sensorama’ wasn’t remotely near the first stereoscopic VR-style viewer on the market with the technology having originally been developed as early as 1836 by the British scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone. (4)
Nor was the ‘Sensorama’ particularly novel since the ‘Tru-View’ stereoscopic viewer was manufactured from 1932 until the late 1960s by the Rock Island Bridge and Iron Works in Illinois/Oregon and was a similar product to Heiling’s later ‘Sensorama’. (5) We also that the Novelview Company in New York manufactured and marketed a similar product as early as 1936. (6)
Meanwhile Edwin Eugene Mayer and William Gruber of Portland, Oregon – who were both of non-jewish German origin - created the famous ‘View-Master’ in the 1920s/1930s and debuted at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which was a commercial success and bought the company behind ‘Tru-View’ in 1951. (7)
Thus, we can see that Virtual Reality was not ‘invented’ by jews but rather by non-jews with one jew creating a relatively late version of it in its early development into what we understand to be Virtual Reality today.
References
(1) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(2) Namron Regrebsubla, 2015, ‘Determinants of Diffusion of Virtual Reality’, 1st Edition, GRIN Verlag: Munich, p. 5
(3) Cf. Brenda Laurel, 1993, ‘Computers as Theatre’, 1st Edition, Addison-Wesley: Boston, pp. 49–65
(4) https://www.kcl.ac.uk/charles-wheatstone-the-father-of-3d-and-virtual-reality-technology-2
(5) https://www.stereoscopy.com/tru-vue/truvuestory.html
(6) Ibid.
(7) https://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/worlds_fair/viewmaster/index.htm; https://3dstereo.com/collections/worlds-fairs; https://www.si.edu/object/sawyers-view-master%3Anmah_1129885