First-Hand:Ingenious Gender Detector

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Ingenious Gender Detector

In my opinion a following invention should be also added to the History of our profession. I read about it a long time ago so please excuse my memory full of holes like Swiss cheese.

At New York World's Fair 1964 was shown gender recognition equipment designed and developed by RCA. Any visitor has to stay on a small platform and within seconds he or she was told being "masculine" of "feminine" with amazing accuracy.

I think there is still somebody to remember this. Of course, there was a trick: in 1964 women used to wear not-so-long skirt, only men wore pants. So a small thermal detector about 10" over the platform indicated if there was a warm lower leg or cold pants. Of course, it worked only then. Some years later women wore also pants (or long skirts).

I think it was the best example of things we develop: ingenious – and short-lived.

Of course, I'm a computer guru.