The history of wheelchairs in China can be traced back to the "Wooden Cow and Flowing Horse" invented by Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of the Shu Han Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period. This tool was used during the Northern Expedition, with a carrying capacity of "one-year-old grain", about 400 kilograms or more, which can be 100,000 military uniform grains for the Kingdom of Shu.
In 1921, the then 39-year-old political rookie Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio while on vacation on Campobello Island. This disabled the left leg of the future president of the United States and had to resort to wheelchair operations.
"Three Kingdoms · Shu Zhi · Zhuge Liang Biography" writes: "Brightness is better than ingenuity, profit and loss, wooden cows and horses, all unexpected." Song Dynasty Gao Cheng compiled "Things Jiyuan", focusing on the original, which records the credit of the cart belonged to Zhuge Liang. Before the popularization of modern transportation, it was a kind of light transportation and manned transportation, especially in the north. Its function is almost the same as that of a donkey. The emergence of trolleys has a lot to do with the improvement of wheelchairs.
The chair with wheels engraved on the sarcophagus during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (525 AD) is considered to be the oldest record of a wheelchair.
In some early Japanese paintings, you can see the appearance of a wooden wheelchair. It looks like a cart for people with very small wheels.
During the American Civil War, a lightweight rattan wheelchair appeared to be used with metal wheels. In 1914, IBM's predecessor, a computer watchmaking and recording company, hired a woman in a wheelchair. This is their first disabled employee.
The design of wheelchairs has long gone beyond the scope of serving humans. Cats, dogs, pigs and even tortoises have examples of wheelchairs that restore freedom through special designs.
In the world-recognized history of wheelchairs, there are two earliest records. One is a sarcophagus in the Southern and Northern Dynasties of China (525 AD). The sarcophagus has a chair with wheels engraved on it; the other is a vase from ancient Greece depicting a similar thing, which is about the same time as China.
The earliest official record of wheelchair in Europe is a wheelbarrow in the Middle Ages, which needs to be promoted by others and is closer to contemporary nursing wheelchairs. In the 16th century AD, during the Renaissance, King Philip II of Spain suffered a stroke and ordered craftsmen to make wheelchairs. This wheelchair is made of wood, very heavy and inconvenient to use, but for the disabled at that time, it was already a very good tool.
In some early paintings in Europe and Japan, you can see the appearance of a wooden wheelchair, which looks like a cart for people to ride, with very small wheels. People may not have thought of it at that time. In the case of a "manual wheelchair", the wheels exist only to slide when pushed by a person.
Around the 18th century, wheelchairs appeared in a design close to modern design, consisting of two large wooden front wheels and a single small wheel at the back, with a chair with armrests in the middle.
On July 30, 1955, a wheelchair shooting competition was held at Mandeville Hospital in Eldsbury, England.
In 1975, Bob Hall became the first person to complete a marathon in a wheelchair.
On a stamp issued by the International Year of the Disabled in 1981, a disabled artist sits in a wheelchair and paints with his mouth.
The 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games commemorative stamp shows the wheelchair of the Kingdom of Tonga athletes participating in the competition.
In wheelchair racing competitions, sports members must use special wheelchairs to compete on the track and field, and the racing wheelchair must have at least two large wheels and one small wheel. The diameter of large wheels including pneumatic tires must not exceed 70 cm, and the diameter of small wheels must not exceed 50 cm. In order to make the wheelchair not easy to roll over, the rear two wheels of the racing wheelchair must be eight-shaped, and the maximum height of the main body of the wheelchair from the ground must not exceed 50 cm. The use of mechanical devices or levers for driving the wheelchair is not allowed, and only the members of the movement can drive the wheels or turn the crank to move forward.
BMW designed a special racing speed wheelchair for members of the American Paralympic Games. Aerodynamic technology and unique shape. BMW even improved the design of sports gloves. Usually, gloves are configured by sports staff, but in this group of wheelchairs, gloves are all 3D printed.
With the need of competition, the design of wheelchairs is moving in the direction of emphasizing functionality, comfort, durability and cool appearance, and its technological content is getting higher and higher. From ancient times to the present, wheelchairs have gone from "allowing the disabled to walk out of the house with the help of others" to "the disabled can walk out of the house by themselves", and then to a technology where they can get up, climb stairs, cross the grass, and run very fast. wheelchair. The wheelchair has realized the improvement and transcendence of human mobility from a tool to compensate for the defects of human limb function.
