1/14 - BIOGRAPHY THREAD:
Founder Jonathan Waldern is departing @DigiLensInc. He shared a video yesterday on Linkedin noting his departure & advertising that he is exploring opportunities.

Jonathan's Likedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-waldern/

Read More…—>

#SmartGlasses #AR #VR

2/14 - WALDERN 1985-1990

While exploring these concept in the early 80s at University in Loughborough, Jonathan began his career in Virtual Reality, in earnest, in 1985 when he founded W Industries. "W" would be re-incorporated & rebranded in 1990 as Virtuality.

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3/14 - WALDERN 1990-1997

In the 90s Jonathan was the reigning star of the VR 1.0 era—Virtuality was the highest valuation, venture-backed VR startup of its day.

Steve Job's discontinued development of Quicktime VR in 1997 is often sighted as the collapse of VR 1.0.

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4/14 - WALDERN 1997-1999

In spite of Virtuality's meteoric rise, and the entire early VR industry's precipitous fall, Waldern continued on, founding Retinal Displays, productized under the Philips brand in Europe and the US, and Takara in Japan.

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5/14 - WALDERN 1999-2002

DigiLens Telecom developed components for telecommunications infrastructure—including electrically switchable gratings that would lay the technological groundwork for the optics that differentiate DigiLens Inc.'s future waveguide displays.

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6/14 - WALDERN 2004-2020 - DigiLens

DigiLens built revenue early on, creating a dash-mount waveguide display for the avionics of Embraer Jets, in collaboration with the commercial arm of Rockwell Collins.

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7/14 - WALDERN 2004-2020 - DigiLens

In near-eye optics, DigiLens productized HudwaySight, a detachable heads-up AR display available for use with many motorcycle helmets.

SEE: https://hudway.co/sight 

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8/14 - WALDERN 2004-2020 - DigiLens

DigiLens continued their partnership with Rockwell, building stereoscopic systems for the US military, incorporating their WFOV AR waveguide into Rockwell's IDVS system.

VIDEO:

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9/14 - WALDERN 2004-2020 - DigiLens

This technology would make it into DigiLens commercial optics, as seen in their line of Crystal reference systems. DigiLens maintains industry leadership in wide field of view waveguide optics.

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10/14 - WALDERN 2004-2020 - DigiLens

Niantic is an investor and, though nothing was officially confirmed, I'll go out on a limb and say DigiLens is the waveguide partner on Niantic's Qualcomm reference system.

SEE: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/smartglasses-timing-unexpected-correlations-christopher-grayson/

continued—> https://twitter.com/chrisgrayson/status/1252478550709583872

11/14 - WALDERN 2004-2020 - DigiLens

DigiLens continues to lead, with their Visualize Design v1 modular reference system.

DOCUMENTATION [PDF]: https://www.digilens.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2020_MAY_VizD1_TECHSPEC_v2.pdf

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12/14 - VISIONARY

While Waldern launched W Industries within the year of Jaron Lanier's VPL Research, Lanier proved a more successful cultural commentator than entrepreneur, and enjoys greater name recognition.

Waldern's contribution to the industry has been greater.

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13/14 - Jonathan's own Video

This is a slightly edited cut of Jonathan's parting video, shared yesterday on Linkedin (edited to fit into Twitter's play length).

Comment on his own video post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonathan-waldern_anniversary-technology-entrepreneur-activity-6694633522977652736-hwvV

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14/14 - LOOP

cc: @tomemrich @benz145 @sophiecharara @jetscott @reverendkjr @scobleizer @charliefink @brianroemmele @lucasmtny @joshconstine @mattmiesnieks @mattswider @navahk @skarredghost @deantak @karanganesan @cathyhackl @alexeheath

Back to start: https://twitter.com/chrisgrayson/status/1289350991502962690