Who created the Sensorama, an early virtual-reality machine demonstrated in 1962?

Morton Heilig created the Sensorama, an early virtual-reality machine demonstrated in 1962.

Heilig was a filmmaker and inventor who imagined cinema as a multisensory experience rather than a purely visual one. His Sensorama arcade-style device presented stereoscopic 3D images, stereo sound, vibrations, wind and smells to simulate experiences such as riding a motorcycle.

The Sensorama was mechanical and did not use modern computer-generated graphics, but it anticipated several ideas central to virtual reality: immersion, sensory feedback and simulated environments. Heilig also patented a head-mounted television system called the Telesphere Mask in 1960.

A common mix-up is calling Heilig the inventor of modern computer VR. Ivan Sutherland later built the influential computer-connected Sword of Damocles, while Heilig’s work belongs to an earlier, largely mechanical phase of immersive media.