10 Sci-Fi Gadgets That Inspired Real Inventions

The idea of virtual reality actually dates back to 1935, in the story Pygmalion's Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum. In his groundbreaking story, he wrote of a form of entertainment similar to a dream, more immersive than a movie, in which, "the story is all about you, and you are in it."

Looking further into the later years of the 20th Century, ideas of virtual reality were developed in popular films like Total Recall and The Matrix. In each of these, the user was dropped into a world which felt entirely real to them - though they had to lie back in chairs and suffered rather unpleasant installation processes. Other instances were even closer to modern reality and featured the entry to a virtual world through a mask which can be pulled over the face. These included Lawnmower Man, Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic.

In reality, the 1990s were plagued with failed attempts to develop a fun virtual reality experience, for example Nintendo's Virtual Boy (or VR-32) whose games were coloured entirely in red and black and that was discontinued after just a year. Fast forward to the present day, however, and VR systems like those seen in Hackers are being given away with mobile phones as a freebie.

We might not yet be in the world of fully-immersive experiences, but we've made tremendous progress in recent years and once again the inspiration was drawn from fiction.