A Parachute Accident in 1992 jump-started the birth of Augmented Reality

interesting History of Science moment of course, and let me add another angle to that..

* many computer circuits and components were invented in Silicon Valley over several decades after WW II

* LSD was manufactured and distributed widely in California and around the world in several decades after WW II

* jumping out of an airplane was known to adventure seekers, available, and was associated with the extreme change in reality perception.. LSD was known to adventure seekers, available and associated with extreme change in reality perception

Augmented Reality using digital electronics was always a target of interest to researchers, artists, adventure seekers, musicians and others engaging extreme change in reality perception. Many of those people made incremental progress in hundreds of ways, to discover, manufacture and distribute parts of technology chains that we know commonly today. There are fewer "this is how it happened" moments but overall, much larger impacts to tech innovation IMHO. Perennial odd-man-out Jaron Lanier is a central individual to some of this. See every issue of Mondo 2000 or other niche 'zines of the past century. Strange bedfellows of military and civilians since electronics advances are commercialized and manufactured closely related to military-industrial complex.

TLDR: he needed cameras to do AR. They were hard to get at the time. Dummy thrown out of an airplane with a bunch of sensors and cameras failed to deploy its parachute. Scavenged two cameras out of the six on the dummy to build his AR system.