Thread by @Gankra_

everyone's always on about the Virtual Boy as the origin of virtual reality or whatever but this completely erases the far older history of "Wink-o-Vision" which clearly defined all the standard conventions and tricks that the entire industry is just rediscovering the hard way 🧵

Wink-o-Vision's founder was a japanese player-piano technician in the days when they were enormous machines that filled rooms. while doing some routine repairs, he discovered that his flashlight shining through the piano's "roll" made his assistant wink and blink uncontrollably

fascinated by this, he spent years investigating how the speed of the piano and spacing of the notes could be tuned to make people's eyes blink in specific patterns

notably, after an initial "metronome sequence" the lights could be removed and the patient could maintain the beat

he would spend long nights in his labs inducing himself with different winking patterns and trying to perform different tasks, fascinated by how this distorted his perception of depth and perspective

this all came to a head when he induced himself with a wink pattern and went to a local airing of one of those new-fangled "moving pictures". however the projector technician made an error and the film shook wildly. everyone was nauseated except him -- he saw incredible effects!

somehow the flat canvas had developed depth!

this being his first ever "moving picture" he just thought that he had a normal experience, but was horribly dismayed when he enthusiastically went to his second movie without winking... it was all flat!

it didn't take him long to figure out what had happened, and he paid the technician to show him how he had "messed up" the projection.

it didn't take him long to automate this process and develop the very first Wink-o-Vision projection system

by placing the projector *behind* the screen, he could start with the screen lifted and blast everyone directly with light attenuate with film designed just like his player piano rolls!

once the audience was winking, he would lower the curtain and begin the film... with depth!

unfortunately, backwards projection with sufficient power to induce winking had many significant challenges, and movies needed to be explicitly mastered and designed to really take advantage of the technology

Wink-o-Vision was clearly regarded as the superior format by the hardcore Picturefiles (as they called themselves then) but the cheaper and easier to develop flat in-front-of-screen movie format ultimately won out and dominated the market

I know what you're thinking: why haven't I ever heard of this company? who was this man?

as it turns out, you have! Wink-o-Vision still exists today, but under a different name: Sony Interactive Entertainment

That's right, I've been talking about Segata Sanshiro this whole time