The Galvactivator, a glove-like wearable device that senses the wearer's skin conductivity and maps its values to a bright LED display, has been added to the Science Museum Group collection. 

Developed in 1999 by Jocelyn Riseberg Scheirer and other researchers in the Affective Computing group, with collaborators from Philips Research, the Galvactivator measures skin conductivity across the users' palms. As conductivity increases, indicating a higher level of physiological arousal, the LEDs embedded in the device glow more brightly. The researchers found that users tended to "glow" more brightly when they were more engaged—for example, during a large meeting, users "glowed" when a new speaker took the stage, and during live demos and audience interaction. They tended to "go dim" during PowerPoint presentations. 

As part of the Science Museum collection, the Galvactivator joins a diverse, internationally significant collection of items from science, technology, engineering, medicine, transport, and media. The collection has been growing since 1851, and now comprises 7.3 million items.