Development of rehabilitation engineering over the years: as I see it.

The descriptive words “Rehabilitation Engineering” were not used widely, if at all, in America until the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then mostly by persons who had first been involved with prosthetics research and development immediately after World War II. Rehabilitation engineering in America owes its birth to the federal agencies that fostered its development after they had been so successful in supporting programs of research, education, and development in limb prosthetics and orthotics (initially for veterans) during the period from 1945 to 1970. But before its more or less formal birth in America around 1970, examples of engineering activities in the rehabilitation field can be cited through much of recorded history.