I have reloaded "Bicycles and manual wheelchairs - a short history "
Bicycles and manual wheelchairs - a short history http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpFaAAo3UPE
and "Bicycles and manual wheelchairs - a short history " HD https://vimeo.com/76080069
The oldest known European visual representation of a wheelchair comes from a woodcut by Hans Weiditz. It is dated 1531 and was published in Augsburg, Bavaria (now in modern Germany).
The first recorded use of a wheelchair in England was in 1662, when John Evelyn (1620-1706) a diarist and an acquaintance of the famous Samuel Pepys, commented in his own diary on Lord Aubignie's "wheele-chaire".
John Evelyn, recorded in his entry of 11th of January,1662 that:
"I dined this day at Arundell-house, where I heard excellent Musique, perform'd by the ablest Masters both French & Eng, on Theorba, Viols, Organs & Voices as an Exercise against the comming of the Queene, as purposly composd for her chapell &c: After which my Lord Aubignie (her Majesties Almoner to be) shewed us his elegant Lodging; & his wheele-chaire for Ease & motion, with divers other Curiosities,......."
The inventor John Joseph Merlin,,was born in Huys near Liege, Belgium in 1735. Merlin arrived in England at the age of 25. He was watch & clock maker by profession and also a mechanical genius. In the mid 1770's he invented roller-skates and presented his new creation this by arriving at a London party playing his violin whilst gliding around the room. Merlin received rapacious applause and an encore, the party-goers demanded that he repeated his act, during the second attempt, he quickly discovered that he didn't known how to stop and he had a major accident. The next we read about him is of the invention of a new type of self-propelled wheelchair. What was new is that each propelling wheel had a smaller wheel attached so that the wheelchair user did not get dog excrement, etc. on their hands. His design was so successful that 120 years later, a London catalogue of medical equipment was able to boast nine different 'Merlin' wheelchairs available on their books. Merlin died in 1803.
The Oxford English Dictionary records that the first actual spelling of the word "wheel-chair" was made in a private letter by Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) which was only published in 1952. The great novelist wrote:
I am to.. be promoted to a wheel-chair as the weather serves."
Throughout the 19th century and even into the early 20th century wheelchairs were hired or purchased from furniture shops. It was not until after the Second World War, and the introduction of a National Health Service in the UK that manual wheelchairs were provided on a basis of physical need.
Soundtrack by Keith Armstrong The full soundtrack can be heard in stereo at: http://soundcloud.com/user8580052/keith-armstrong-travelling
Bicycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycles Wheelchairs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelchairs
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