A Shirt That Thinks

computer. "My notion is that clothing is the computer," he says. "We are adding intelligence to clothing."

That notion didn't work for Levi's. The San Francisco clothesmaker worked with Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands to create a jacket equipped with a cell phone. It was a bomb, and Levi's shut down production within months of its introduction. But Jayaraman says his product has better prospects because the Levi's jacket had wires and other components stuck inside; his smart-shirt technology, by contrast, is much more comfortable because the fiber optics are just a little larger than the threads of the garment itself. The smart shirt may cost a few hundred dollars, says Sensatex CEO Wolf, but he says he's confident there will be demand for it in the health care and fitness markets. Although he's aiming to get it on the market by 2002, he has yet to sign a manufacturer.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Army is working on its own line of smart clothes. In the not-too-distant future, soldiers' uniforms may be able to change colors like a chameleon to match their surroundings, says Tom Tassinari, a senior scientist who oversees projects on advanced fabrics in the Army's Natick, Mass., research center. Smart uniforms might also one day sense the presence of poisonous gas or detect when a bullet hits the wearer and send a signal to the soldier's commander. They might even administer medicine; skin patches that use electrical impulses to send medicine into the body have been on the market for years.

"It's wild," Tassinari says, adding that it'll probably be some time before soldiers are wearing these smart clothes.

For now, though, the battle will be waged over the consumer.