The wheelchair that might have been

In 1959, the U.S. National Inventors Council, a clearinghouse for inventions that might have military use, sponsored a design competition for a stair-climbing wheelchair. Ernesto Blanco submitted his idea and created this one-quarter scale model as a proof of concept. He didn't win the US $5,000 prize-in fact, the council never picked a winner. But Blanco went on to invent numerous aids for people with disabilities because he viewed such work as a form of social justice. "Engineering is a service profession," the engineer told an interviewer in 2002. "It is about improving things for mankind."