Jaron Lanier coined (or popularized, depending on your sources) the term virtual reality. Jaron Lanier designed and built the first most complete commercially-available virtual reality system. It included the Dataglove and the EyePhone head-mounted display. The Dataglove would evolve into the Nintendo Powerglove. The Dataglove was able to track hand gestures through a unique trait of fiber optic cable. If you scratch a fiber optic cable, and shine light through it while it is straight, very little of the light will escape. But if you bend the scratched fiber optic cable, light will escape, and the more you bend it, the more light escapes. This light was measured and then used to calculate finger movements.

While the first generation of VR tried to use natural, gesture-based input (specifically hand), today's latest iteration of VR is, for the most part, skips hand-based input (with the exception of Leap and, to a very limited extent, HoloLens). My theory is that the new generation of VR developers grew up with a controller in their hands and were very comfortable with that input device, whereas the original set of VR designers had very little experience with a controller and that is why they felt the need to use natural input.