Prosthetics have been used to replace lost limbs since there have been limbs to be lost; during this time, peg legs and crutches have transformed into power suits and robot arms. The prosthetic limb was once a static, inflexible mockery of what it was replacing. Today, incredible technology has gone into the science of prosthetics, making them elegant examples of technology and design that are awe inspiring. We are much closer to Science Fiction than you probably think. Your jaw will drop as you take a journey through the past, present, and future of prosthetic technology.
(Images via Africa Science, robot nine, mentalfloss)
Prosthetic toes made of wood were recently found on an Egyptian mummy (pictured above), and such ingenuity continues to be required in less technologically advanced areas of the world. Where a prosthetic limb was once carved out of wood, they can now be fashioned out of an old basketball and some sturdy paddles.
(Images via we-make-money-not-art, marvelironman)
No longer just an instrument to help the disabled recover functionality, some additions provide superior strength and stamina to the most fit individuals. An external suit can take the pressure off your limbs while carrying heavy bags, or help remove the stress of repetitive actions. No matter how they’re used, lurching power suits are incredibly appealing, as they dance close to the dream of bionic humans so often found in literature, film, and television.
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Animals get hurt too, and people are always coming up with innovative ways to maintain quality of life for their furry friends. A broken leg used to be a death sentence for a horse, but now even a lost limb can be taken care of.
(Images via prosthetic limbs, virtualworldlets, nydailynews, geek)
Arguably the most difficult limb to replace is the arm, and by extension (literally), the hand. With an intricate weave of tendons and musculature allowing the most minute movements, early attempts to add functionality involved attaching a hook or wooden arm with the inability to move. From the revolutionary clasping motion, to the most modern neurally controlled arm in existence, the DEKA, prosthetics are progressing in sophistication at an incredible rate.
(Images via daylife, reason, wired)
People who lost legs once had to resign themselves to lives spent hobbling with crutches; this is no longer the case. The advancement of material strength and flexibility, and the departure from feet that look like feet, allow the disabled to run with incredible speed – so much so, that the paralympic games are investigating whether modern prosthetic legs provide an unfair advantage.
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Transportation for the disabled is difficult enough, but advances in sports technology are allowing people to maintain their hobbies despite any physical limitations. There are snowboards that hook directly into your prosthetic and special bikes usable even if you only have one leg. Innovations are consistently pushing the boundaries of what is and isn’t possible.
(Images via epitalizacion, science museum, hvmag)
If one were to step back only a scattering of decades, the difference in prosthetic technology would be astounding. The peg leg of our great grandparents holds no comparison to the alloy legs of today. Performers with peg legs used to be notable mostly for their uniqueness, much like a freak at the circus. Thankfully, society is no longer as close minded.
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Mobility has long been the greatest hurdle for those who lose a leg (or two), but the variety of prosthetics is astounding. Some legs attempt to fool the eye by looking as realistic as possible, while others make no attempt to hide their function behind their form.
(Images via free republic, greendiary, science ahead)
Prosthetic hands now provide enough feedback to cradle an egg, and enough strength to grab and lift almost any object. The means of manipulation have changed as well – pulleys have been replaced by connections back to nerves on the body that allow one to control one’s limb just as they control their originals.
(Images via gizmodo, uwaterloo, artificial limbs, methodist rehab)
Their are over 26 bones in the human foot, and even removing one toe can cause issues with balance. With the amount of weight and stress placed each time you step down, and the need for feet to be able to bounce back without losing all of the energy pushing against the ground, designing a prosthetic foot is far from simple. Solutions range from the plodding mannequin foot and peg leg to the mechanically responsive and pnuematic.
(Images via coated, canadian space program, fast company, spike, gadget)
The future of prosthetics can be an enjoyable exercise in design that uniquely bridges the gap between the personal and the technological. The above photos are conceptual, but from what we’ve seen thus far, don’t seem to be out of reach. These designs will no doubt inspire the look of the next generation of prosthetics.
(Images via gandt, lbufano, dvice, stelarc)
The prosthetics link the technological and the personal, the inanimate with the human, in such a unique manner, that it’s the source of inspiration for a great number of artists. Lumbering man-machines and extra arms are the dreams of those without missing limbs, while the beauty and surreal natural of prosthetics are the source of a very different kind of art.
(Images via Gizmodo, BoingBoing, moolf)
Land animals having prosthetics is interesting, but not unexpected. Adding a missing limb or a wheel to a turtle or dog can be cute or inspirational, but adding a fin to a dolphin is just plain stunning. Wild birds and swimming creatures are not immune to the dangers of poachers and rogue boats, but fixing them is much more difficult, and even more amazing.
(Image via UKn Technology)
The evolution of the prosthetic limb is not far from the hopeful image above, and there is little doubt that technology and design inspiration will continue to push the boundaries of what we once thought possible.
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Wouldn’t it be great to be able to hand out business cards that proclaim you a ‘professional sleeper’, or fortune cookie writer? Of course, for every curiously awesome job, there’s a foul, wretched one – like vomit collector at an amusement park or waste-burning toilet attendant on a ship. To get any of these 13 weird gigs, you either have to be really lucky – or really desperate.
Vomit Collector
(image via: The Daily Star)
Inevitably, some people who can’t handle the twists and turns of rollercoasters end up losing their lunches. But have you ever thought about the person who has to clean it all up? Meet Rhys Owen, the official vomit collector at Thorpe Park, a theme park in England. The park needed a dedicated ‘chunder-cleaner’, as they so charmingly put it in Britain, for a particularly stomach-churning ride.
“Although being responsible for cleaning up peoples’ puke is a bit gross, I am up for taking on the chunder challenge,” says Owen. “I absolutely love rollercoasters and the perk of being able to ride them for free makes the sick collection worth it – I may have to invest in a nose peg though!”
Armpit Sniffer
(image via: Merlin Silk)
Store shelves are packed with all kinds of deodorant – and some work better than others. But who determines whether a deodorant is actually effective? Since test subjects can’t necessarily be trusted to evaluate their own bodily odors, odor testers have to step in and sniff for themselves. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
Turd Burner
(image via: Discovery.com)
Dumping human waste into the sea isn’t a great way of dealing with it, but seafarers can’t always just wait until they’re back on land to go. That’s where Turd Burners come in. These workers maintain and operate special toilets that burn waste so it’s converted into harmless, germ-free, odorless ashes. But they’ve got to use their nose to tell if something’s wrong with the toilet – if there’s a bad smell, something’s wrong. ‘Turd burning’ is just one of the many dirty jobs that The Discovery Channel’s Mike Rowe has had to take on.
Pet Food Taster
(image via: The Daily Mail)
Few people have ever sniffed a can of wet dog or cat food and thought, ‘yum’. But Simon Allison tastes pet food for a living – and likes it. The senior food technologist for Marks & Spencer in the UK won’t allow anything that doesn’t pass his taste-test to go on store shelves.
“You have to chew it a bit. I have trained my palate to look for materials that we will not allow in the recipe, such as tripe – pet owners react badly to the smell of tripe.I’m looking for a paté texture, almost to the point where you could spread it on crusty bread. It has a very slightly gritty texture but overall it should be smooth – and studded with peas and carrots.”
His favorite? Organic luxury dinner with vegetables for cats.
Dung Archaeologist
(image via: NPR.org)
Studying the remnants of ancient human history has a certain romanticism to it, but not everything left behind by our forefathers is pretty. Take feces, for instance. Pathoecologists like Karl Reinhard, the world’s foremost expert in ancient feces analysis, spend their days sifting through piles of dung in search of clues about our ancestors’ lives, diets and environments.
“Most obviously, if you know what people were excreting, you can get a pretty good idea of what they were eating,” says Reinhard. “If you find thorny-headed worms, you know they were eating insects. If you see roundworms, you know there was meat. It’s all part of establishing the relationships between human behavior and environment and the diseases they had. We didn’t end up with all the diseases we have around now by chance. They evolved with us, and we want to know how that happened.”
Professional Whistler
(image via: StevetheWhistler.com)
Steve Herbst gets paid to whistle. “I’d like to be the go-to guy for whoever is looking for a whistler,” Herbst – an advertising VP who hasn’t given up his day job yet – told the NY Post. As a child, Herbst’s parents brought him to dinner parties to entertain guests, and he has since performed at Carnegie Hall and on television. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I can hold my own with a symphony orchestra,” he says.
Ski Slope Illustrator
(image via: Fortune Magazine)
While there are many illustrators making admirable earnings doing what they love, few have so specific a subject as James Niehues. Commissioned by ski resorts to make super-accurate renderings, Niehues now sells his originals through an art broker and hopes to move on to national parks.
“When I receive a commission, I’ll go on location and fly the area. I photograph closeups and sections of the mountain as well as an overall view. Then I work with topographic maps and make a sketch that shows all the shadows, trees, and buildings. I try to give every area an individual look or feel.”
Golf Ball Diver
(image via: IlovetoGolf.com)
For all the balls they accidentally knock into the water, few golfers wade in and try to retrieve them. That’s what golf ball divers are for. Golf equipment stores selling ‘gently used’ golf balls often pay several independent golf ball divers to gather as many of the errant balls as they can, usually for about 6 cents each. Some estimates put golf ball divers’ salaries at over $100,000 a year, but it can be a dangerous job – a 75-year-old man died while diving for golf balls, 27 years after his son perished the same way.
Professional Sleeper
(image via: NewYorkology)
Many of us sleep on the job – but if we got caught, we’d be heading to the unemployment line. But there are some people who actually get paid to snooze. This type of job typically involves participating in sleep research projects at hospitals and universities, but there are even stranger ways to be a professional sleeper. The New Museum of Contemporary Art put out want ads in January 2009 seeking women willing to come in, take a sleeping pill and zonk out during the museum’s opening hours. The women who got the jobs then became living museum exhibitions titled after their own names, such as ‘This is Kate’, pictured above.
Worm Picker
(image via: goosmurf)
They come out at night, wearing miner’s hats with headlamps and cans strapped around their ankles. Seeking out wet spots with lots of worms coming up to surface, they grab the slimy little creatures and put them in the cans. Good-quality worms fetch up to $18 per can. Professional worm picking may be a weird job, but it can be more dangerous than it sounds – especially when competing worm pickers get territorial. In Canada in 1993, rival worm-picking groups got in a violent fight that involved steel pipes and setting a van on fire – all over the most lowly of invertebrates.
Fortune Cookie Writer
(image via: Robert Couse-Baker)
Donald Lau used to find inspiration everywhere, writing gems like “”Beware of odors from unfamiliar sources” after a memorably stinky ride on the subway. But these days, the VP of Long Island City’s Wonton Food, Inc. is recycling fortunes. In 1995, after 11 years of jotting down any insightful thought that came to him, Lau gave up on trying to be original. Such jobs are few and far between, but Lau finally put out a want ad for a new fortune writer in 2005.
Dice Inspector
(image via: Thunderchild)
Even the smallest imperfection in a dice can skew the odds, causing it to land on a particular side more often than the others. Hence, the need for dice inspectors – people who carefully examine dice for blemishes, incorrect proportions and angles that are even the slightest bit off. Such quality control inspectors are found in practically every industry, so there are strange ‘inspectors’ of all sorts.
Snake Milker
(image via: The Age)
Snake venom is powerful stuff – just as it can be extremely harmful to people and animals if we’re bitten, it can also heal. Not only is it needed for antivenin, but it is also being applied in medical research for pharmaceuticals that may help stroke victims, or treat malignant tumors. Snake milkers stretch a thin membrane over a glass or plastic receptacle, induce the snake to bite through the membrane and apply pressure to the snake’s venom glands to collect the venom. Another method involves electrical stimulation.
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Ready to hob nob with some high class doorknobs? These dozen daring twists on a traditionally utilitarian theme will unlock your perceptions of what room decor could and should be.
The First Modern Doorknob
(images via: eHow and Rest and Restlessness)
Doorknobs… a most common, everyday appurtenance that’s seen little or no improvement since the age of the ancient Egyptians? Wrong! It wasn’t until December 10th of the year 1878 (AD, not BC) that the US Patent Office approved a patent for the first practical “door holding device”: the complete doorknob as we know it today. Perhaps even more surprising (considering the era) is that the doorknob patent was awarded to an African-UKn named Osbourn Dorsey. Very little is known about Dorsey other than he had a certain aptitude for door-related devices – he’s also credited with inventing the doorstop.
Molecular Doorknob Gets A Round
(images via: Sherle Wagner and Outblush)
Sherle Wagner’s Molecular Doorknob was a 2005 design exercise in polished nickel plating that features a half-dozen spherical “atoms” in close association, much like the shape of an actual molecule made by combining individual atoms. The Molecular Doorknob makes one think… about which sphere the user should turn to open the door.
Illumi-Knob Lights Your Way
(images via: Gizmag and Absolutely New)
Think doorknobs are the epitome of low-tech? Think again: the Illumi-Knob may even be smarter than you! Well, at least in the middle of the night when you’re stumbling around the bedroom searching for the knob of the bedroom door. You can’t see the knob but the knob senses you, thanks to a futuristic passive infra-red sensor that can detect movement within 10 feet. Once the knob knows you’re coming (how’s that for scary?), a pair of LED rings softly light up, guiding you to the exit. Each Illumi-Knob holds 3 AAA batteries to power the sensor and its modernistic design acts to turn any standard doorknob into an easy to grasp lever. Look for it in stores by the spring of 2010.
Rapping On The Door? Ice Cube Doorknobs
(images via: We Covet and Sydney DiaryStar)
There’s not much that can be said about these Ice Cube Doorknobs, other than they look mighty cool with their squared-off design complemented by carved grass hardware. It’s not known for certain whether rapper/actor (raptor?) Ice Cube has these, but really, who’s going to walk up and ask him about his doorknobs?
Art Glass Doorknobs
(images via: Toxiferous, InventorSpot and OOTB)
Out Of The Blue Design Studio will knock your socks off with literally dozens of spectacularly beautiful doorknobs crafted with care from exquisite art glass. The available designs range from natural images of leaves, flowers and even a globe, to more abstract themes that serve to focus your attention – and likely the sun’s rays on a bright clear day. These cooler than cool doorknobs look so good you’ll be tempted to forbid people from touching them for fear of leaving fingerprints.
Hand Blown Glass Doorknobs
(images via: Design Hole)
Tracy Glover melds artistic sensibility with everyday practicality in an ethereal series of hand blown glass doorknobs. One may wonder if designing a high-traffic object like a doorknob in possibly fragile blown glass is really a good idea. The beauty of Glover’s doorknobs speaks for itself – but the bathroom door might not be the best place to install them.
Doorknob Art
(images via: Hap Moore)
The art of the doorknob? Why not – doorknobs present an almost cameo-like circular surface that many 19th century artists and decorators have found perfectly amenable to the styles of the times. Though old-fashioned doorknob art has fallen from grace, collectors have acted to preserve this unique art form by saving, trading and auctioning the best examples of the genre.
Glacial Stone Doorknobs
(images via: Hap Moore)
Cold, hard stone, ground down from immense rocky boulders by mammoth sheets of ice a mile or more thick… then outfitted with brass hardware and installed on your door. If the thought of grasping nature’s bounty worn smooth by the action of wind, water and ice over thousands of years sounds appealing – and indeed it does – these roughly matched sets of glacial stone doorknobs from Skipping Stones are exactly what you’ve been looking for.
Handshake Doorknobs
(images via: Toxiferous, Garden Web and LikeCool)
Imagine you’re at a stranger’s house for the first time and as chance would have it, nature called… following the instructions to head “down the hall, second door on the right”, you arrive at the portal in question and are greeted – literally – by a handshake doorknob. Various thoughts may then come to mind, especially “I shouldn’t have had that last beer.” It could be worse: the handshake doorknob could be on the INSIDE of the bathroom instead of on the outside.
The Knob Light
(images via: Yanko Design and Craziest Gadgets)
It had to happen at some point: somebody notices the similarity of doorknobs and light bulbs, then designs The Knob Light, a doorknob that looks like – and acts like – a light bulb. The somebody who did this deed is South Korea’s Jeong-Sun Park. Rumors are the runner-up was an 8-year-old kid named Kevin who, being home alone and with nothing much else to do, tried the same thing using an actual 100-watt light bulb that was always on.
Smart Doorknob Is Smart
(images via: PC News and Yanko Design)
Dumb as a doorknob? Not THIS doorknob, called The Doorknob Condition by its designer, Arnaud Lapierre. An innovative pulley mechanism retracts the outside doorknob to be flush with the door’s facing, thus foiling any uninvited “guests” who attempt to enter.
Primeval Doorknob
(image via: Roxane)
The raw earthiness of the above image – and the doorknob which it depicts – are evocative of a time in the distant past before industrialization standardized utilitarian devices like doorknobs. This one, located somewhere in Scotland, looks as if it was laboriously hand-carved by the same forgotten ancients who built Stonehenge… and probably from the same type of stone.
Doorknobs have taken their knocks, being as they have often been the doormats of home design – no offense to doormats. Hopefully this entry will be the key that opens the door to the many ways doorknobs can turn the mundane into the magnificent.
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Fighter pilots train on PC flight simulators, so now the Royal Navy has just invested £50,000 in 230 PSPs to help marine engineers prepare for exams. As you’d expect, the PSPs come with custom software explaining aspects of the work under scrutiny, with both video and audio explanations for the hard of reading.
Commander Trevor Price said: “We are working on the premise that looking at a book is now seen as dull and boring. When I was at school you sat at your desk and you did your work and that was it.” That’s them told.
U God feat. Method Man (Wu Tang)
Foreign Beggars – Contact – Produced by Noisia
Joshua Allen Harris’ Inflatable Streetart in New York [VIA]
Dep, Tizer, Bonzai and Lovepusher painting in the Russian Club in East London for Glug, filmed by Charlie Inman
Timelapse aerosol graffiti by probs // endofthleine //// promotional video for Avatar – commissioned by Casio and 20th Century Fox for the new James Cameron blockbuster.
DUST is a “What if world”, a fictionary world based on our true history and mixed-up with science fiction, created by Paolo Parente. Toys, Kits & Comics all available on his site!!
The setting is around 1950 the “cold war” where all the superpowers are developing new high-tech armaments, getting ready for a new war…
The difference is that amongst them we find Nazi Germany and their Axis allies, who were the first to develop new weapon technologies at the end of 1944, ending the ward in a different way compared to history.
Thanks to Toybot Studios for showing this to me!
