I have been an above-knee amputee for over 50 years. For the first 30 years, my prosthesis was balsa wood with a simple mechanical knee. I fell a lot, could only walk at one fixed speed, would sweat through a shirt going from car to plane, walked downstairs or the ramp to the plane in abject fear of falling and had the classic limping gait of an amputee. I knew nothing else and certainly did not imagine all of those things would be solved through the application of microprocessor technology.
