Entepreneur Creates Prosthetic Invention for Personal Reasons
Iht.com:
In 1976, when Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee sprinter from South Africa, was 21, his left leg was severed below the knee in a water-skiing accident. At the hospital, he was measured for a pink wood-and-rubber leg and sent home. A former athlete, Phillips said it felt “like a sentence from hell.”
Phillips said he became obsessed with creating a better prosthetic leg. When he was a student at the Northwestern University Medical School Prosthetic-Orthotic Center, professors discouraged him from challenging the status quo, he said. He learned that the artificial limb industry had changed little since World War II and the Korean War. Most prosthetics were designed within the cosmetic envelope — a prosthetic foot resembled the human foot. There was no energy to propel a leg.
Borrowing concepts from pole vaulting, the spring of a diving board and the C shape of a Chinese sword his father owned, Phillips imagined a prosthetic that […]
Original post by Nicholas and software by Elliott Back