EMERGING T h e c 21st Century Skills InnovatIon LIbrary Wearable Electronics Cherry Lake PubLishing ann arbor MiChigan by Martin Gitlin
EMERGING TeCh Chapter 1 Past and Present W e live in an exciting time for technology It seems like cool new gadgets are coming out almost constantly Many of the most inter esting products to hit the market in recent years are electronic devices you can wear Wearable electronics serve many purposes They are video games and toys They are virtual play grounds They are learning devices They are health Many people use wearable devices to pay for things instead of using cash or credit cards 44
Today’s hearing aids are much smaller and work much better than earlier versions monitors They are personal odometers They are cameras But they are not new They have been around for more than a century Travel back in time to 1898 That was the year electrical engineer Miller Reese Hutchison invented the first wearable electronic It was a hearing aid known as the Akouphone It used electricity to make sounds louder But it only worked if it was attached to a large tabletop machine So much for leaving the house to visit friends 5 Wearable electronics
