A Brief History of Augmented Reality and Journalism

By anothercookiecrumbles

  • First print journalism AR experiment

    Esquire magazine launches its December issue with an AR cover, where Robert Downey Jr. introduces you to the issue

  • Museums explore augmented reality for their exhibitions

    Including:
    - Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto for the exhibition, "Ultimate Dinosaurs"
    - Getty Museum in Los Angeles for "Life of Art"
    - Science Museum in London has Top Gear's James May turn into a virtual museum guide

  • Print newspaper makes content kid-friendly

    Tokyo Shimbun makes its stories "come alive" with animated cartoon characters, pop-up headlines, and commentaries, for children when app users hover their smartphones/tablets over the print news articles.

  • Google Glass launches

    ...and prototypes are sold to "Explorers" for $1,500

  • Automobile manufacturers provide augmented reality application for service employees

    The app, MARTA, labels individual parts and shows instructions to help the technicians repair the car.

  • $50m investment in Magic Leap is the largest AR investment yet

  • Google Glass available to the general public

  • Google Glass discontinued

  • Microsoft Hololens developer version released costing $3,000

  • The New Yorker launches its first AR cover

    Christoph Niemann designed the "On The Go" cover for the New Yorker.

  • Washington Post publishes its first AR story

    The Washington Post publishes, "Events leading to Freddie Gray’s death, explained in augmented reality"

  • Pokémon Go launched

    The location-based augmented-reality game was the fasted to reach the top of both, the iOS App Store and Google Play, and had the largest number of downloads (for any app) in its first week.

  • Snapchat (Snap, Inc.) launches Spectacles that will initially simply record 10 seconds of video to begin with. It is laying the foundation to become an AR company, according to Upload VR.

    While Spectacles will initially simply record 10 seconds of video to begin with, it is laying the foundation to become an AR company, according to Upload VR.