"You don't get your eureka moments sitting in the lab, as much as you do talking to a colleague over coffee, " says Alan Fish, Johns Hopkins's vice president for real estate.

WSJ: Donated Land Is Battlefield

Those 10 undergo rigorous performance testing at the Trumbull, Conn. headquarters by white-coated lab technicians who run millions of pieces of paper through the equipment, spill coffee into copiers and jam paper clips into fax machines.

FORBES: Paper Chase

These gadgets and gizmos may work in the MIT's lab, but there's still a long way to go before our clothing computes or our coffee machines know our caffeine cravings.

CNN: MIT 'cyborgs' bridge gap between man and machine