E-textiles, also known as electronic textiles, smart textiles, or smart fabrics, are fabrics that enable digital components (including small computers), and electronics to be embedded in them. Much intelligent clothing, smart clothing, wearable technology, and wearable computing projects involve the use of e-textiles.
Electronic textiles are distinct from wearable computing because the emphasis is placed on the seamless integration of textiles with electronic elements like microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators. Furthermore, e-textiles need not be wearable. For instance, e-textiles are also found in interior design.
The related field of fibertronics explores how electronic and computational functionality can be integrated into textile fibers.
History
The basic materials needed to construct e-textiles, conductive threads and fabrics have been around for over 1000 years. In particular, artisans have been wrapping fine metal foils, most often gold and silver, around fabric threads for centuries. At the end of the 19th century, as people developed and grew accustomed to electric appliances, designers and engineers began to combine electricity with clothing and jewelry developing a series of illuminated and motorized necklaces, hats, broaches, and costumes. For example, in the late 1800s, a person could hire young women adorned in light-studded evening gowns from the Electric Girl Lighting Company to provide cocktail party entertainment.
In 1968, the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City held a groundbreaking exhibition called Body Covering that focused on the relationship between technology and apparel. The show featured astronauts space suits along with clothing that could inflate and deflate, light up, and heat and cool itself. Particularly noteworthy in this collection was the work of Diana Dew, a designer who created a line of electronic fashion, including electroluminescent party dresses and belts that could sound alarmed sirens.
In 1985, an inventor by the name of Harry Wainwright created the first fully animated sweatshirt consisting of fiber optics, LEDs, and a microprocessor to control individual frames of animation resulting in a full-color cartoon on the surface of apparel. Wainwright went on to invent the first machine in 1995 enabling fiber optics to be machined into fabrics, the process needed for manufacturing enough for mass markets and hired a German machine designer, Herbert Selbach, from Selbach Machinery to produce the world first CNC machine able to automatically implant fiber optics into any flexible material (www.usneedle.com) in 1997. Receiving the first of a dozen patents based on LED/Optic displays and machinery in 1989, the first CNC machines went into production in 1998 beginning with the production of animated coats for Disney Parks in 1998. The first ECG Bio-Physical display jackets employing LED/Optic displays were created by Wainwright and David Bychkov, the CEO of Exmovere.
Uses
Health monitoring of vital signs of the wearer such as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, activity, and posture.
Sports training data acquisition
Monitoring personnel handling hazardous materials
Tracking the position and status of soldiers in action
Monitoring pilot or truck driver fatigue
Electronic textiles are distinct from wearable computing because the emphasis is placed on the seamless integration of textiles with electronic elements like microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators. Furthermore, e-textiles need not be wearable. For instance, e-textiles are also found in interior design.
The related field of fibertronics explores how electronic and computational functionality can be integrated into textile fibers.
History
The basic materials needed to construct e-textiles, conductive threads and fabrics have been around for over 1000 years. In particular, artisans have been wrapping fine metal foils, most often gold and silver, around fabric threads for centuries. At the end of the 19th century, as people developed and grew accustomed to electric appliances, designers and engineers began to combine electricity with clothing and jewelry developing a series of illuminated and motorized necklaces, hats, broaches, and costumes. For example, in the late 1800s, a person could hire young women adorned in light-studded evening gowns from the Electric Girl Lighting Company to provide cocktail party entertainment.
In 1968, the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City held a groundbreaking exhibition called Body Covering that focused on the relationship between technology and apparel. The show featured astronauts space suits along with clothing that could inflate and deflate, light up, and heat and cool itself. Particularly noteworthy in this collection was the work of Diana Dew, a designer who created a line of electronic fashion, including electroluminescent party dresses and belts that could sound alarmed sirens.
In 1985, an inventor by the name of Harry Wainwright created the first fully animated sweatshirt consisting of fiber optics, LEDs, and a microprocessor to control individual frames of animation resulting in a full-color cartoon on the surface of apparel. Wainwright went on to invent the first machine in 1995 enabling fiber optics to be machined into fabrics, the process needed for manufacturing enough for mass markets and hired a German machine designer, Herbert Selbach, from Selbach Machinery to produce the world first CNC machine able to automatically implant fiber optics into any flexible material (www.usneedle.com) in 1997. Receiving the first of a dozen patents based on LED/Optic displays and machinery in 1989, the first CNC machines went into production in 1998 beginning with the production of animated coats for Disney Parks in 1998. The first ECG Bio-Physical display jackets employing LED/Optic displays were created by Wainwright and David Bychkov, the CEO of Exmovere.
Uses
Health monitoring of vital signs of the wearer such as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, activity, and posture.
Sports training data acquisition
Monitoring personnel handling hazardous materials
Tracking the position and status of soldiers in action
Monitoring pilot or truck driver fatigue
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