There are plenty of stories about inventors who see a problem and decide they can do better. But Van Phillips had a little more motivation than most. The problem was his own leg. In 1976, Phillips was a 21-year-old college student when a water-skiing accident cost him his left leg below the knee. If that wasn’t bad enough, the prosthetic leg he received afterward wasn’t exactly a technological marvel. Prosthetic limbs of the era were generally designed to look and act something like a biological leg and foot, but “act” might be giving them too much credit. They were passive structures that provided something to stand on and roll over while walking.
Phillips wanted to do more than walk. There was just one problem: he wasn’t an engineer. Before the accident, he had been studying business. So, if he was going to build a better leg, first he was going to have to learn how.
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Traditional prosthetic feet (public domain)
Phillips became fascinated with prosthetics and eventually studied prosthetic design at Northwestern University’s Prosthetic-Orthotic Center. He also worked at the University of Utah’s prosthetics laboratory, where he had access to both the people and equipment he needed to experiment.
