Wearable devices have taken the imagination of many. From smart watches, to headsets, to rings, to technology powered clothes, to even nanotechnology and implants — many individuals and companies are developing exciting technologies in the wearable space. According to market research, the space is expected to grow tremendously over the next decade (growing at greater than 20% annually and expected market size of 150 billion EUR by 2028). In this article, we’ll explore what wearable devices are and take a guided history of the space.
Wearable Devices
The broadest definition for wearable devices (also often shortened to just wearables) is that it is technology that can be worn. Using this definition, wearables have been around for hundreds of years. For example, we can consider lens correcting glasses (made in the 13th century by Roger Bacon), watches (earliest records point to Peter Henlein in early 16th century), and abacus rings (the earliest instance traced back to the 17th century during the Qing Dynasty in China) as wearable devices. They are worn devices that leverage technology: glasses are placed on the face and leverage the lens refraction to correct visions; watches are worn in pockets or the wrist and tell time; and abacus rings are on the fingers and equip the user with a mini abacus for mathematical operations.
Following the advent of computers in the 1950s, the more modern definition of wearable devices emerged, which is technology that can be worn, imbued with electronics and computing capabilities. This definition most closely aligns with how people / media use the term today (source: New York Times, CNBC, Investopedia). Under this modern definition, the previous examples wouldn’t be considered “wearable devices’’ as they lack electronics / computing. Instead, Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR) / Extended Reality (XR) / Mixed Reality (MR) glasses or headsets (e.g., Oculus, Google Glass, HoloLens), smart watches (e.g., Fitbit, Samsung Galaxy Watch, Apple Watch), and smart rings (e.g., McLear NFC Ring, Oura Ring, Circular Ring) would meet this definition. For this article, we’ll stick with this (modern) definition.
There is further murkiness on the precise definition for wearable devices, especially when it comes to what it means for a device to be worn. Some will argue that a device that is close to the body constitutes as a wearable; an example would be a portable music player (e.g., Sony Walkman, CD Player, Apple iPod) because the device is near the user’s body, portable, and interacts with a body part (namely the ears). Under this definition, a phone would also constitute as a wearable device. Others will argue that being worn means that it is predominantly in contact with the body, so glasses, rings, and watches would count as wearables but not phones or portable electronics. For this article, we’ll stick with the latter interpretation of worn (in contact with the body) because there’s a distinction in terms of design / engineering when it comes to being in contact versus being close to the body.
Early Wearables
The first wearable device was created in 1961 by Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon. They designed a shoe imbued with a timing device that could help predict a ball’s position for roulette. According to their paper (which they released later in 1966), they were able to get a 44% performance gain (albeit the edge was hard to sustain long term due hardware issues).
During the 1960s and early 1970s, early prototypes of modern wearables were created. For example, Hugo Grensback invented glasses that let the user view TV (hence the product is dubbed TV glasses), and it’s considered an early instance of smart glasses / headsets. Another example is Ivan Sutherland’s “Sword of Damocles” (i.e., a head mounted display system) which is considered an early instance of a VR headset.
Significant breakthroughs in wearables came from wrist watches. Most historians consider the Pulsar Calculator Watch from 1975 to be the first watch in the (modern) wearable space. The watch came with a hefty price tag of several thousands of dollars (some reporting it going as high as $3950 EUR), hence it wasn’t very common. It wasn’t until 1977, when the Hewlett Packard HP-01 watch was released, that wearables achieved mass market impact. The HP-01 is considered the first instance of mass-market wearable.
Over the next couple of decades (late 1970s to early 2000s), we start to see the miniaturization of electronics. For example, devices that produce music transforming from radios to Walkmans to CD players to iPods, significantly becoming smaller. Miniaturization enabled portability — it became easier to carry electronics, and with smaller form factors, electronics became wearable. For example, cameras reduce tremendously in size from their origins allowing them to be worn (e.g., such as through GoPros). Another example is electronics being embedded in clothes, which became possible due to a smaller / lighter form factor.
Note: as with any history, we can only reference what we have evidence for from the past / was documented. Maybe there are earlier examples, but they may have gone undocumented / are lost in history. Furthermore, the history of wearables is very rich, but this article will not be exhaustive.
Present Day Wearables
Wearables have proliferated since the late 2000s, with FitBits, Apple Watches, and other fitness / life trackers being much more commonplace in society. Furthermore, the complexity and features of modern wearables is much greater. Comparing the Apple Watch to the HP-01 (which was basically a calculator and watch fused together), the Apple Watch has apps, voice recognition, notifications, location tracking, and much more!
Moreover, many big companies are investing heavily in creating wearable technology. For example, Google developed Wear OS, which is the first operating system for wearable technology. Google also acquired FitBit in 2021 and they plan to integrate into Wear OS. Another example is in AR / VR / XR / MR which has interest from Microsoft (with their HoloLens), Meta (with their Oculus and Ray-Ban Stories), and Apple (with their ARkit and rumored headset). There are also numerous start-ups exploring the wearable space as well — according to CrunchBase (at the time of publishing), there are 580 organizations with a total funding amount of $7.7 billion USD.
Most recently, during the COVID pandemic, wearables, especially in the healthcare space, have expanded tremendously. With increased interest in health monitoring and social distance protocols, many new wearables that track health data, communicate between patients and doctors, and help with treatments were developed during the past 2–3 years (for more information, read: The Rise of Wearable Devices during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review).
Looking into the future, it is expected that wearables will be more commonplace and sophisticated. There is strong momentum, investment, and development of adjacent technologies to make wearables ubiquitous.
Conclusion
Wearable technology has fascinated humanity for hundreds of years. As electronics and computing become more accessible, there are more feature rich wearables on the market. And as time goes on, we will see continued development from major tech companies and start-ups!
For more on this topic, check out: The Adjacent Technologies Empowering Wearables
