It was based on the patented technology of the VPL Dataglove, but with many modifications that allowed it to be used with slow hardware and sold at an affordable price. Where the Dataglove could detect yaw, pitch and roll, used fiber optic sensors to detect finger flexure and had a resolution of 256 positions (8 bits) per 5 fingers, the Power Glove could only detect roll, and used sensors coated with conductive ink yielding a resolution of 4 positions (2 bits) per 4 fingers. [2] This allowed the Power Glove to store all the finger flexure information in a single byte. [3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_glove