When wheelchair innovation in Britain was under state control

Abstract

Before 1948, most disabled people had to look to the private market for wheelchairs or rely on charitable gifts and donations. With the advent of the National Health Service, the British State assumed responsibility for not only the supply and distribution of wheelchairs, but also for their development. Hence, the state not only altered fundamentally the market for wheelchairs it extended its reach deep into the technical detail of wheelchair innovation. Nevertheless, as influential as the state was, it would be wrong to endow it with omnipotence. Technologies and the forces that create and sustain them are constructed from diverse elements. The objectives of this paper are: to provide a historical overview of the development of the Ministry Model 8F, to explore the various interests that shaped its evolution and set the social and political conditions within which that evolution took place.