The History of the Electric Wheelchair for Disabled Persons
Man has always devised new ways of mobility amidst physical setbacks. The earliest traces of the wheelchair date back to around 600 A.D., when Chinese walls displayed pictures of a three-wheeled chair. As years progressed the device evolved into the electric wheelchair, continually improving through the 20th century in the wake of the Industrial Era. Electrically powered wheelchairs multiplied as inventors and innovators saw maximum potential and profit from their efforts.
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Early History
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In 1881, Gustave Trouve, a Frenchman, attached a battery to a tricycle. He utilized electric motors and named it a trike. A year later in 1882, the electric wheelchair had its earliest appearance in England, where William Edward Ayrton and John Perry coordinated their efforts to produce an electric tricycle. They fit the electric tricycle with two big wheels at the back and a central wheel at the front, bringing it closer to what later became standard wheelchair design.
20th Century Improvements
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George Westinghouse, an American inventor and founder of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, had a few designs for an electric wheelchair beside him upon his death in 1914, which occurred in a manual wheelchair. Because of this, many presume he is one of the first inventors of the electric chair. Two years later a group of British engineers revealed what they called a motorized wheelchair; however, it was too expensive for the average disabled citizen to use and the material from which it was made was too heavy and inflexible to be practical.
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More Modifications
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In 1932, Harry Jennings engineered a foldable frame wheelchair with the help of Herbert Everest, a paraplegic. Upon this basic pattern, the inventors improved on the frame to create an electric wheelchair. Everest and Jennings patented their model of the electric wheelchair in 1937 and reigned as the wheelchair provider for America, monopolizing 90 percent of the wheelchair market until the late 1970s.
Canadians take pride in their own George Klein, an acclaimed inventor who created another successful version of the electric wheelchair. Klein, along with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), the Canadian Paraplegic Association and Canada's Department of Veteran Affairs, worked to achieve this feat. The National Research Council of Canada patented and released the Klein electric wheelchair in 1955.
The iBOT
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The iBOT is a high tech electric electronic wheelchair with the potential to cushion reverberations from passing over uneven surfaces, mount stairs and hoist the wheelchair user. The U.S. Food and Drug Association approved and released this electrical wheelchair in 2006. It came complete with top-notch gears, modes and speeds. The iBOT is the brainchild of Dr. Dean Kamen, who founded the DEKA Research and Development Corporation. The iBOT was priced around $25,000 when it entered the market. However, due to its costliness and some defective operation, it is no longer available.
Modern Electric Wheelchairs
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Despite the failure of the iBOT, electric wheelchairs today come with cutting-edge technology. Automated advances have made the power wheelchair heavier as it performs more complicated movements to facilitate ease and convenience, allowing disabled persons a broad range of mobility customized to their needs.
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References
- Photo Credit wheelchair access sign image by Gina Smith from Fotolia.com
