The Sensorama: One of the First Functioning Efforts in Virtual Reality

American cinematographer and inventor Morton Heilig described his vision of a multi-sensory theater in a 1955 paper entitled "The Cinema of the Future."

In 1962 Heilig built a prototype of his immersive, multi-sensory, mechanical multimodal theater called the Sensorama, and created five short films to be displayed in it.  On August 28, 1962 Heilig was granted U.S. Patent 3,050,870 for a "Sensorama Simulator."  This invention is considered one of the earliest functioning efforts in virtual reality.