Some experience with prosthetic problems of above-knee amputees.

F O R almost a dozen years the University of California has been active in prosthetics research. On the recommendation of the then Committee on Prosthetic Devices (now the Prosthetics Research Board) of the National Research Council, there was established in 1945, with the cosponsorship of the School of Medicine in San Francisco and the College of Engineering in Berkeley, the Prosthetic Devices Research Project (now the LowerExtremity Amputee Research Project), a program designed primarily for the purpose of conducting studies in several areas of importance to leg amputees, especially fundamental studies of the processes of human locomotion. Supported on a continuing basis with funds supplied by the Veterans Administration, the work has from the beginning been under the supervision of Howard D. Eberhart, Professor of Civil Engineering, and Verne T. Inman, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery. In the course of fundamental research, the need for experimental devices required the activation of an engineering design group, and consequently a small staff of design engineers,