1901

L. Frank Baum, an author, first mentions the idea of an electronic display/spectacles that overlays data onto real life (in this case 'people'), it is named a 'character marker'.

1957–62

Morton Heilig, a cinematographer, creates and patents a simulator called Sensorama with visuals, sound, vibration, and smell.

1968

Ivan Sutherland invents the head-mounted display and positions it as a window into a virtual world.

1975

Myron Krueger creates Videoplace to allow users to interact with virtual objects.

1980

The research by Gavan Lintern of the University of Illinois is the first published work to show the value of a heads up display for teaching real-world flight skills.

1980

Steve Mann creates the first wearable computer, a computer vision system with text and graphical overlays on a photographically mediated scene.

1981

Dan Reitan geospatially maps multiple weather radar images and space-based and studio cameras to earth maps and abstract symbols for television weather broadcasts, bringing a precursor concept to augmented reality (mixed real/graphical images) to TV.

1984

In the film The Terminator, the Terminator uses a heads-up display in several parts of the film. In one part, he accesses a diagram of the gear system of the truck he gets into towards the end of the film.

1987

Douglas George and Robert Morris create a working prototype of an astronomical telescope-based "heads-up display" system (a precursor concept to augmented reality) which superimposed in the telescope eyepiece, over the actual sky images, multi-intensity star, and celestial body images, and other relevant information.

1989

Jaron Lanier creates VPL Research, an early commercial business around virtual worlds.

1990

The term 'Augmented Reality' is attributed to Thomas P. Caudell, a former Boeing researcher.

1992

Louis Rosenberg develops one of the first functioning AR systems, called Virtual Fixtures, at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory—Armstrong, and demonstrates benefits to human performance.

1993

Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre and Doree Seligmann present an early paper on an AR system prototype, KARMA, at the Graphics Interface conference.

1993

Mike Abernathy, et al., report the first use of augmented reality in identifying space debris using Rockwell WorldView by overlaying satellite geographic trajectories on live telescope video.

1993

A widely cited version of the paper above is published in Communications of the ACM – Special issue on computer augmented environments, edited by Pierre Wellner, Wendy Mackay, and Rich Gold.

1993

Loral WDL, with sponsorship from STRICOM, performed the first demonstration combining live AR-equipped vehicles and manned simulators. Unpublished paper, J. Barrilleaux, "Experiences and Observations in Applying Augmented Reality to Live Training", 1999.

1994

Julie Martin creates first 'Augmented Reality Theater production', Dancing In Cyberspace, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, features dancers and acrobats manipulating body–sized virtual object in real time, projected into the same physical space and performance plane. The acrobats appeared immersed within the virtual object and environments. The installation used Silicon Graphics computers and Polhemus sensing system.

1995

S. Ravela et al. at University of Massachusetts introduce a vision-based system using monocular cameras to track objects (engine blocks) across views for augmented reality.

1998

Spatial Augmented Reality introduced at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Ramesh Raskar, Welch, Henry Fuchs.

1999

Frank Delgado, Mike Abernathy et al. report successful flight test of LandForm software video map overlay from a helicopter at Army Yuma Proving Ground overlaying video with runways, taxiways, roads and road names.

1999

The US Naval Research Laboratory engage on a decade-long research program called the Battlefield Augmented Reality System (BARS) to prototype some of the early wearable systems for dismounted soldier operating in urban environment for situation awareness and training NRL BARS Web page.

1999

Hirokazu Kato (加藤 博一) created ARToolKit at HITLab, where AR later was further developed by other HITLab scientists, demonstrating it at SIGGRAPH.

2000

Bruce H. Thomas develops ARQuake, the first outdoor mobile AR game, demonstrating it in the International Symposium on Wearable Computers.

2001

NASA X-38 flown using LandForm software video map overlays at Dryden Flight Research Center.

2004

Outdoor helmet-mounted AR system demonstrated by Trimble Navigation and the Human Interface Tech nology Laboratory.

2008

Wikitude AR Travel Guide launches on 20 Oct 2008 with the G1 Android phone.

2009

ARToolkit was ported to Adobe Flash (FLARToolkit) by Saqoosha, bringing augmented reality to the web browser.

2012

Launch of Lyteshot, an interactive AR gaming platform that utilizes smart glasses for game data.

2013

Meta announces the Meta 1 developer kit, the first to market AR see-through display.

2013

Google announces an open beta test of its Google Glass augmented reality glasses. The glasses reach the Internet through Bluetooth, which connects to the wireless service on a user’s cellphone. The glasses respond when a user speaks, touches the frame or moves the head.

2014

Mahei creates the first generation of augmented reality enhanced educational toys.

2015

Microsoft announces Windows Holographic and the HoloLens augmented reality headset. The headset utilizes various sensors and a processing unit to blend high definition "holograms" with the real world.

2016

Niantic released Pokémon Go for iOS and Android in July 2016. The game quickly became one of the most popular smartphone applications and in turn spiked the popularity of augmented reality games.