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A wheelchair is a wheeled chair that is used when walking is difficult or impossible due to disease, accident, or age-related issues. Spinal cord injuries (paraplegia, hemiplegia, and quadriplegia), broken leg(s), cerebral palsy, brain damage, osteogenesis imperfecta, a.k.a. brittle bones, motor neuron disease (MND), multiple sclerosis (MS), muscular dystrophy (MD), spina bifida, and other conditions are among them. Wheelchairs are available in a range of styles to fulfill the demands of their users. As seen with sports wheelchairs and beach wheelchairs, they may incorporate customized seating adaptations and personalized controls tailored to certain activities.

The most well-known distinction is between powered wheelchairs, which are propelled by batteries and electric motors, and manually propelled wheelchairs, which are propelled by the wheelchair user/occupant pushing the wheelchair by hand (“self-propelled”), by an attendant pushing from the back using the handle(s), or by an attendant pushing from the side using a handle.

An inscription discovered on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed portrayed in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dated between the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, are the first evidence of wheeled furniture. Three centuries later, in China, the first wheeled chairs were used to transport disabled people; the Chinese utilized early wheelbarrows to carry people and heavy things. It wasn’t until approximately 525 CE that a difference was formed between the two purposes when pictures of wheeled chairs designed solely to transport people began to appear in Chinese art.

Although Europeans soon devised a comparable design, this mode of transportation did not exist until 1595, when it was created for King Phillip II by an unknown creator from Spain. Even though it was a luxurious chair with armrests and leg rests, the design had flaws since it lacked a practical propulsion system and hence required help to move. As a result, the design is more akin to a modern-day highchair or portable throne for the affluent than a modern-day wheelchair for the disabled.

Stephan Farffler, a 22-year-old paraplegic watchmaker, developed the world’s first self-propelled chair on a three-wheel frame utilizing a crank and cogwheel mechanism in 1655. The device, however, looked more like a handcycle than a wheelchair since it featured hand cranks installed on the front wheel.

From roughly 1760, the invalid carriage or Bath chair made the technology more widely available.

Wheelchairs (sometimes known as “rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City in 1887 so that disabled visitors may use them and enjoy the Boardwalk. Many healthy travelers soon leased the ornamented “rolling chairs,” as well as attendants to push them, as a show of opulence and luxury they could never have at home.

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