Wearable technology is perhaps the most prolific trend in the tech industry today.

From activity-tracking fitness bands to Google Glass and Oculus Rift, big names are getting involved in the once-niche technology — and they're getting involved in big ways.

You probably wouldn't have guessed that the tech behind wearable computing devices finds much of its history in attempting to cheat casinos. Inventors built some of the first wearables in the 1960s and '70s to count cards and improve a gambler's odds at the roulette table.

From there, working with wearables remained a small-scale field. Aside from the explosion of calculator wristwatches in the '80s, wearable tech saw little change in terms of consumer devices. The technology was admirable, perhaps, but not practical for the consumer and certainly not user friendly. When things finally caught up with our favorite sci-fi films a few years after the turn of the millennium, we started to buy into it.

Below, we've compiled a timeline of wearable technology's history, from the casino to the consumer.