There are several types of invisibility. There is the type that you see in the movies portrayed by the invisible man, where science has gone mad and some how allowed light to pass through the human body rendering it invisible. There is another type of invisibility where science is trying to bend light to hide objects and there is the third type where technology is being used to hide objects, this is a form of camouflage.

As far as we know, no one has been able to make light pass through the human body to create invisibility. Bending light to hide people or things doesn't yet seem to be a reality although many people talk about the philadelphia experiment as this type of experiment gone bad Supposedly an experiment was conducted in 1943. The purpose of this experiment was to shield a ship from radar. To this end a ship, The Eldridge, was fitted with secret devices. It is said that a witness saw the ship disappear when the device was turned on and the ship reappeared in a different location. The story goes on to say that some of the crew were fused into the plating of the ship. If this is true than instead of being successful in hiding an object it was teleported. See http://aboutfacts.net/Science4.htm. for more info on teleporting.

Eldridge
Source: US Navy

Camouflage is a French word that means "to blind or veil". Over the years it has come to mean to disguise an object by hiding it or making it look like something else. Many animals are dark on the their backs and the color gradually gets litter until their bellies are very light or white. This attribute makes them harder to see when they are in their environment and is one of the principles of camouflage. Early man was a hunter. Somewhere a hunter may have wrapped himself in grass or branches to hide himself and allow him to get closer to his pray and this may be how camouflage all began. Even today this method is used for military snipers. They wrap themselves in a suit made from the grasses and twigs of the surrounding area, rendering them invisible. This suit is called a Ghillie Suit and in the US Army each sniper is responsible for creating his own.

Ghillie Suit
Photo Source: US Army

But there is another form of camouflage that we didn't mention. That is the type of camouflage that makes things appear to be there that are not. This was used very successfully in World War II. Allied leaders didn't want the Germans to know where we were going to invade so they created a mythical 1st Army and put General Patton in charge of it. While the army didn't really exist, many things were made to look like objects of war, such as planes, tanks, trucks, etc. Inflatable vehicles and planes when places strategically on the ground looked like the real thing from the air. This completely fooled the enemy. One of the all time greats in the use of camouflage was Jasper Maskelyne During war time he made entire cities seem to be in different places from where they actually were. Another trick of his was to make tanks look like trucks and trucks look like tanks. This worked very well when moving tanks without the enemy noticing.

Just when you thought everything that could be done in the art of camouflage has been done there is something new on the horizon. Using a series of tiny screens on the underbelly of a plane and tiny cameras on top, it is now possible to show what is above the plane on its bottom. This effectively hides the plane from viewers on the ground. The same principle is being studied for clothing and may someday made soldiers invisible by transmitting the scenery from behind the soldier to tiny screens in front of him. This is the type of technology that may be available to everyone. Just think if it catches on as a fashion statement. You may see people walking down the street with their whole mid sections missing because they are wearing that new electronic camouflage shirt.