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History of rehabilitation engineering
Published in Alex Mihailidis, Roger Smith, Rehabilitation Engineering, 2023
Gerald Weisman, Gerry Dickerson
The modern era of manual wheelchairs began in 1932 when mechanical engineer Harry Jennings built the first tubular steel wheelchair for his disabled friend Herbert Everest (Figure 1.16). The wheelchair was capable of folding by using a cross frame. The folding wheelchair was capable of being transported in a vehicle, making the outside community more readily available to the person with a disability. They founded the Everest & Jennings (E&J) wheelchair company, which dominated the wheelchair market through the 1980s.
‘Rehabilitation aids for the blind’: disability and technological knowledge in Canada, 1947-1985
Published in History and Technology, 2020
Swail was not the only NRC engineer working on technologies for people with disabilities at this time. George Klein, a non-disabled electrical engineer with the NRC, worked on his now famous ‘Klein chair’ at the same time Swail began labouring on his devices. Klein constructed this electrical-powered wheelchair in 1953 at the request of the Canadian Department of Veterans Affairs. The chair was an adaptation of a manual Everest & Jennings folding wheelchair and a significant improvement over earlier prototypes. Klein consulted at least a selection of veterans during the design process, yet their contributions have largely been lost in the grand narrative of Klein as an iconic Canadian engineer, who would later become known for a host of other inventions and projects such as the microsurgical staple gun, aircraft skis, all-terrain vehicles, as well as his contributions to the ZEEP nuclear reactor and the development of Canadarm in the 1970s.20 Importantly, neither Klein, nor his colleagues at the NRC, envisioned the commercial value of the chair, believing the market to be too small, at least within Canada. With this conviction, they never sought a patent on the device and later gave the chair to the United States government. Soon after, versions of Klein’s electrical wheelchair began to be made in the US by private industries and proved to be a commercial success.21 Historians have recognized Klein’s contributions, and rightfully so, as he designed one of the most operational and practical designs for motorized wheelchairs up until that time.22 Yet the fact that neither Klein nor the NRC anticipated the profitability of the chair is telling of underlying assumptions that would shape the NRC’s perception of Swail’s devices, as well.