From: rh (Robert Horvitz)
Subject: Origins of the DataGlove in the Virtual Baroque
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 90 11:48:06 pdt


 
[Howard, this is for the VR newsgroup, should you wish...]
 
 
VR researchers may be interested to learn of an early precursor
of the DataGlove (tm).  Usually omitted in standard histories of
technology, it was allegedly invented in 1755 by a German
carpenter, Ludwig Zahnstocher, and his young apprentice, P.D.Q.
Bach, who later achieved some notoriety as a composer.  Peter
Schickele's description of the invention includes a cautionary
tale that modern researchers might heed--or not, depending:
 
"...This ingenious device consisted of a pair of wooden gloves
equipped with elaborate spring mechanisms which controlled each
finger independently.  If a harpsichordist wished to limber up
his fingers and relax his hands, he would merely wind up the
springs and place his hands in the gloves, which would bend and
unbend his fingers with a gentle massaging motion.  By far the
more interesting use, however, of the Zahnstocher mechanical
glove was as a self-practicer.  By programming, as we would say
now, a difficult passage in a piece of keyboard music on two
strips of paper not unlike player piano rolls, and inserting
the strips into slots in the gloves, the harpsichordist could not
only watch and listen as the gloves played the passage on the
keyboard, but also, by inserting his hands in the gloves as they
played, he could actually experience what it felt like to be
playing the passage properly;  in other words, the gloves were
literally doing his practicing for him, conditioning, in the
Pavlovian sense, his fingers to perform correctly.  The
mechanical gloves raised great hopes in the hearts of their
inventors, who even started working on a vastly more complex
model for organists, involving foot-gloves, or as they are even
more confusingly called in German, foot-hand-shoes
(Fusshandschuhe) for practicing the pedals.
 
"Unfortunately, a tragic incident occurred which undermined the
whole project.  Prince Ferdinand the Insignificant, a member of
the lesser nobility, expressed an interest in the self-practicer
and even visited Zahnstocher's shop in person to try it out.
He arrived one afternoon, unannounced, just as P.D.Q. was
attaching an optional accessory which they had thought of
adding for those who could afford it:  an automatic fingernail
cutter which did its work while the owner practiced.  Of course,
it was a mistake to allow the Prince to try out the new model
before testing it themselves, but Zahnstocher and P.D.Q. were
undoubtedly so busy thinking up ever more extravagant
compliments with which to ingratiate themselves in the eyes of
their esteemed visitor, that they completely neglected those
common rules of safety of which they were probably only dimly
aware anyway.  To dwell upon sensational details would be to
violate the scholarly nature of the present work;  suffice it
therefore to say that Ferd the Four-Fingered, as he came to be
called, died of natural causes before he could wreak revenge."
 
---from THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF P.D.Q. BACH (Random House,
1976), pp. 6-7.