Workshop: Disability, Prostheses and Patenting, Leeds, 18-19 September 2014
Call for Papers
Disability, Prostheses and Patenting
University of Leeds, 18-19 September 2014
An
international workshop supported by the AHRC Network grant: Rethinking
Patent Cultures
Thanks
to the AHRC we have funding to support speakers’ travel and accommodation
expenses both in the UK and internationally.
By the end of the nineteenth
century, an industry built around prosthetic appliances – hearing aids,
spectacles, walking sticks and specialist furniture – flourished across the
industrial world. Much historical work to date has been conducted on the
significant effect of the American Civil War and the First World War on the
rise of prosthesis production and usage in Europe and the USA (Ott, Serlin & Mihm 2002).
Yet, we are still some way from understanding the relationship between physical
impairment and commerce and the ways in which the commodification of disability
during this period and beyond affected everyday life and health. At least some
of this production operated independently of the medical system since not all
disabled groups were medicalized nor did all inventors developed assistive
devices under the jurisdiction of clinical professionals. Nonetheless,
this increase in production was often linked to systems of patenting. The study
of patented devices for disability support therefore provides us with ways to
uncover trade/user relationships, as well as a way of assessing meanings and
conceptions of disability more holistically – especially for those cases in
which disabled groups themselves took the initiative in patenting activity.
Your
proposal should address at least one of the following themes, covering any
historical period:
i)
What sorts of appliances (patented or unpatented) were used by people
with disabilities to manage their condition? Most studies have focused on
artificial limbs but we need to open up the field to include other prostheses
such as breasts,
dentures, ears, larynxes, noses and penises but also other appliances such as
hearing aids, wheelchairs and furniture (Ott, Serlin &
Mihm 2002). Analyses of more inclusive sets of aids should also be compared to
other everyday objects, such as furniture.
ii)
What
sorts of relationships can be adduced between consumption, production and
patenting both in the UK and globally? Appliance manufacturers certainly seemed
to patent their devices more regularly than for other medical items but how and
why did this vary between appliances? Were manufacturers who were themselves
disabled, or had people with disabilities among their relatives, particularly
prominent in the use of patents to protect their appliances from plagiarism or
infringement proceedings by rivals? Examples might include hearing aids (the
Amplivox collection at the Thackray Museum in Leeds), prosthetic limbs (numerous
examples from the US Civil War and subsequent conflicts) wheelchairs, and
improvements to Braille. How far were medical practitioners involved with these
developments? Were prosthetic appliances seen as occupying a kind of
non-medical domain for which patenting was acceptable?
iii)
How
did war affect patenting activity of such appliances? Lisa Herschbach, for
example, has demonstrated the dramatic increase in the registration of patents
in America following the Civil War and others have examined similar trends in
facial reconstruction after WW1, but was this the case elsewhere and for other
appliances? (Herschbach 1997).
iv)
How
did the gendered nature of appliances affect patenting activity? Most studies
of artificial limbs and facial reconstruction are almost always exclusively
male because they focus on industrial works and primarily, soldiers, but how
far did women also play a role in the patenting and marketing of such
appliances?
If
you wish to participate, please send a paper proposal (300 words maximum) to
Claire Jones c.l.jones@leeds.ac.uk
by Friday 2nd May. Further enquiries about topic and the scope of papers are
welcomed.
Dr Claire L. Jones
Director of the Museum of the History of Science, Technology and
Medicine
School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science
Woodhouse Lane
University of Leeds
LEEDS
LS2 9JT
Telephone: 0113 343 3460
Email: C.L.Jones@leeds.ac.uk
The
Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870-1914, (Pickering & Chatto,
2013)
Museum website: http://arts.leeds.ac.uk/museum-of-hstm/
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