Hugh Herr says he wants to eliminate disability. After 50 minutes listening to him speak at SXSW in Texas, it’s hard not to believe that he’ll do it. Herr is an impressive figure behind a podium; tall, imposing and with a well-cut suit that stops just below the knee. Below that, Herr is constructed of a pair of supremely impressive bionic legs.
Herr has a seductive backstory, which begins with prodigious talent as a young mountain climber. He was lucky to survive a traumatic accident on Mount Washington in January 1982 in which he suffered severe frostbite and had both legs amputated below the knee.
The same stamina and tenacity that made him an exceptional climber also made him dismiss the doctor’s verdict that he would never climb again, so his narrative goes.
Within weeks of having his first prostheses fitted, Herr was climbing again and in a workshop augmenting his very basic prostheses. He developed a bladed device that could wedge itself into smaller crevices than a human foot, welded a crampon to a prosthesis so that he could climb frozen routes up mountains, and even made prostheses much longer than his natural leg length, which meant he could reach holds able-bodied climbers couldn’t stretch to.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/09/disability-amputees-bionics-hugh-herr-super-prostheses
