Ever drive on Rt. 128 and wonder what the hell Franklin W. Olin College is? Turns out it’s an engineering school filled with the cream-of-the-crop of smart people.
And what better way to use an engineering degree than to create a pair of gloves that allow you to creatively write hashtags using a funny hand motion? That’s exactly what these Olin scholars did. After a 24-hour hackathon early last month at Mt. Holyoke, the fearsome hacking foursome better known as Andrew Deaver, Patrick Huston, Byron Wasti, and Keenan Zucker (pictured below, and you know they’re actually in college because look at those yellow-framed glasses), invented the gloves after being inspired by a Justin Timberlake sketch on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
We ready. We in this. We gloves. @HackHolyoke #gloves pic.twitter.com/VcR0cAD3ND
— Hashtag Glove (@HashtagGlove) November 8, 2014
How does it work, you might ask? “There’s conductive fabric on the tips of the fingers, and we put a voltage across them,” Byron Wasti told the Daily Dot. “And then you just short it, and it detects when you short the signal. It’s really basic.”
And you thought using hashtags was basic before using the gloves! Wasti’s description isn’t just a genius engineering student being a genius engineering student, either. Literally all you have to do is make a hashtag sign with your fingers and you’ll get a hashtag on your Twitter. Allow them to demonstrate:
According to The Daily Dot, the inventors estimate the cost of the prototype at around $50, but Patrick Huston adds that, “For right now, the prototype isn’t very conducive to carrying it around and using it day-to-day.” So the hashtag gloves may not be available in 2014, but perhaps next year at this time you’ll be able to #hashtag your whole holiday experience.
[h/t the Daily Dot, BostInno]
