Beacham first encountered augmented reality — which overlays graphics and video over the physical world — a decade ago in a science magazine. But the technology was still expensive and complicated, so he filed the idea away. He next ran into it two years ago at GE Global Research in Schenectady, New York. By then, kids all over the world had been logging thousands of hours on Microsoft’s Xbox and Kinect. A young GE researcher, Matteo Bellucci, who now works for GE’s Additive business, showed the technology and its AR applications to Beacham’s team during a regular monthly technology review.