Steve Mann - Awards and Honors

Awards and Honors

Mann has been described as the "father of wearable computing". In 1961 Edward O. Thorp built a microprocessor timing circuit into a shoe, for covertly cheating at roulette, and referred to himself as inventor of the wearable computer. However, there has been some debate as to whether or not Thorp's covert timing device is a wearable computer in the modern sense of "computer" as a general-purpose device.

Mann has also been described as "the world's first cyborg" in Canadian popular press such as NOW, The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Life but has himself rejected the term "cyborg" as being too vague. Mann has been described as the founder of the field of wearable computing based on his early work in personal imaging, although there is controversy surrounding the exact definition of wearable computing, and whether any one person can be considered to have invented it. For example, wearable computer imaging systems were described by Vannevar Bush in his essay "As We May Think" in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945 and wearable devices for timing the trajectory of the balls on a roulette table were built and used by Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon in 1961.