About this project
History is a
shared reality.
This project exists to preserve not only what was built, but how people came to believe it could be built.
A note from the curator
I was there before Cosm had a name.
Steve Winn had the vision to make Shared Reality real: to take the deep technology of immersive displays and turn it into a place where people could experience something distant as if they were there—without isolating themselves in headsets.
I helped Steve think through the idea in its earliest stages, when it was still only a possibility. He went on to do the extraordinarily hard work: investing, assembling the companies and team, prototyping the technology, securing the partnerships and building the venues that made the idea tangible.
COSM Story is an independent attempt to preserve the longer arc behind that achievement. It begins before Cosm, before E&S, even before computer graphics was a field. It honors the people who handed the work forward—and the founder who saw how those pieces could become something new.
How the history is built
Evidence first.
Wonder intact.
Start with records
Original theses, SEC filings, company documents, annual reports, oral histories and contemporaneous announcements establish the factual spine.
Name the relationship
We distinguish employment at E&S from study in the Utah lab, intellectual influence, collaboration and later corporate ownership.
Keep uncertainty visible
Conflicting dates and promotional claims are resolved against primary sources where possible and qualified where they cannot be.
Invite witnesses
Documents tell us what was recorded. People tell us what it felt like, what almost failed and who made the uncredited leap.
Independent by design
A history, not a brand deck.
The living archive
Add what only you know.
The record is incomplete by default.
Share a memory, correction, name, document or lead. Every contribution is reviewed before publication; nothing is automatically posted.