- The earliest known prosthetics have been found on an Egyptian mummies, where big toes were made out of wood and leather or plastered layers of papyrus. A metal artificial leg dating to 300 B.C. was excavated in Italy in 1910, but until the Renaissance, anything more advanced than a wooden leg was a luxury reserved for the wealthy. In the early 1500s, French surgeon Ambroise Pare revolutionized prosthetic design with the advent of harnesses, knee-lock controls and other engineering innovations. The decimation wrought by the American Civil War sparked a wave of advancements in prosthetics, thanks to both government funding and improved anesthetics that allowed for more precise amputations. In the 21st century, lightweight materials and electronics improved prosthetics by leaps and bounds.
- Prosthetics vary widely, in no small part due to cost. Simple plastic arms and legs and glass eyes are by far the most common prosthetics on the market. More advanced limbs, however, have been developed for amputee athletes. The Icelandic company Ossur developed the Cheetah Flex-Foot, a J-shaped prosthetic foot made of carbon fiber. Medical advancements have also prompted a surge is cosmesis, or the development of life-like prosthetics. These limbs can feature even minor details, from veins to tattoos.
- Many modern prosthetics attach to the remaining limb by way of a suction valve. The amount of control one has of an artificial limb often depends on the number of degrees of freedom. While early prosthetics had none at all, state-of-the-art units can possess more than a dozen. Artificial limbs in the 21st century are capable of turning a key, distinguishing between hot and cold or even handling eggs without breaking. Top-of-the-line prosthetics function through a combination of electrical engineering, nanotechnology, and cognitive science.
-
Improvements in medical care (and body armor) have reduced mortality rates from accidents and warfare, but greatly increased the number of living amputees. Amongst veterans from the Iraq War, for example, amputees make up 3% of those wounded.
In 2008, researchers at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab actually reconfigured the controller for the hit game Guitar Hero to provide a less tedious way for amputees to train their fine motor control. - Some members of the scientific community and the public would like to see prosthetics that not only replace a missing body part, but improve on them. Many modern-day, tech-savvy amputees have attempted to improve ('hack') their own prosthetic designs, resulting in organizations such as the "Open Prosthetics Project," which was founded by an Iraq War veteran. And in 2008, a one-eyed San Francisco artist challenged the engineering community to develop a functional "eye cam" with which she could focus, zoom, and broadcast to the web.
