Inventor Dean Kamen's announcement at this year's TED conference left people in shock and tears: "he explains that a 'very senior' official in the Defense Department came to him last year. We have 1,600 kids who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan without an arm, this official said, and right now we’re giving them a hook, the same technology we’ve used since the Civil War. Then the official told Kamen he wanted him to do the seeming impossible: Build a device so that these amputees can pick up a raisin or a grape and put it in their mouths without crushing it. And build it so that they can detect the difference between the two -- between the raisin and the grape -- by touch.
"Kamen’s team built a prosthetic device (and he showed) a 30-second video of the arm in action: A wounded veteran uses its 'fingers' to grab a water bottle and drink from it; to scratch his nose; to pick up a pen with his thumb and index finger; and to pick up a piece of paper, rotate it toward his face, and read it.
"Kamen visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center while the device was being built. One soldier, he says, told him he was one of the lucky ones, because he lost only his left arm. He still had his good arm, he said. Then he pushed himself back from the table. He had no legs.
"Pretty soon, though, he’ll have two arms." /wired.com/
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