JRRD Then & Now: Commentary on bioengineering of wheelchairs: The past 50 years

It was a pleasure to become reacquainted with the landmark article “Bioengineering methods of wheelchair evaluation” by Peizer et al. from the 1964 Bulletin of Prosthetics Research. As is to be expected, in some areas, there have been tremendous advances since the article was written and, in others, our understanding remains limited. Probably the three most profound aspects of the Peizer et al. article are that (1) much of the wheelchair engineering research at the time could be summarized in a single article, (2) the Department of Veterans Affairs Prosthetics Center was on the leading edge of multidisciplinary team research, and (3) far fewer people were conducting wheelchair-related research. The breadth of the research described by Peizer et al. is remarkable for its time, but the depth of the knowledge was much less than we know today.