Nearly 30 years ago, a Texan named Vernon Reed made a necklace with a liquid-crystal display at the center. By 1990, after a series of one-off LCD jewelry creations, he quit the business. "My jeweler peers did not understand what I was up to, and computer artists were put off by the whole notion of jewelry," he said.
Finally, high-tech jewelry may have come of age. Inspired by the runaway success of the camera phone, cell-phone giant Nokia has launched Imagewear, a line of necklaces that work like 21st century lockets. Crafted around color LCDs, each necklace can receive and display...