KLYNEDESIGN

The first solid references to the use of crutches come from Ancient Egypt. There are general mentions of their use in Egyptian antiquity, and above all a funerary representation of a person using a crutch dated to around the 15th–14th centuries BCE.

2,000 years ago: Greco-Roman antiquity, then long centuries of near standstill

What stands out next is less the evolution than the absence of spectacular evolution. During classical antiquity and then the Middle Ages, the crutch remained essentially a variation on a wooden support:

In other words, for centuries, craftsmanship was refined; the tool itself was not reinvented.

The crutch moves through history as an almost humiliatingly simple object:
it works well enough to survive, so it does not attract the same frenzy of innovation as weapons, ships or machines.
That continuity is neatly summed up by the fact that the “classic” form is still recognisable today.

With industrialisation, the crutch gradually stopped being merely a piece of local carpentry.
It entered a logic of standardised manufacturing.

The real change was not philosophical; it was industrial: more uniform materials, reproducible parts, adjustments that were easier to repeat. But the function remained the same.

The crutch did not suddenly become an “intelligent” object.
It simply became better made.

1917: the first clear modern milestone

A frequently cited landmark in modern history is Emile Schlick’s 1917 patent for the first commercially produced crutch. Here, at last, there is a clear marker of modernity:

the crutch moves from the craft world into the world of a designed, patented, reproducible product.

Precise chronology of the “Schlick cane”

• 1915: Émile Schlick, a civil engineer in Nancy, designs his prototype support cane to help soldiers injured in the First World War.
• 1916: he officially files his patent applications, including the American version on 5 May 1916.
• 1917: the patent is granted and published (no. US1244249A), marking the start of large-scale commercialisation.

• The shaft: a straight cane, often made of wood or solid metal, ending in a rubber tip.
• The handgrip: a horizontal handle located about 20–25 cm below the top of the cane, allowing weight to be unloaded through the hand.
• The forearm support: the major innovation. It was a semi-circular fork, or angled cuff, fixed to the top of an oblique rod to hold the forearm securely and stabilise walking.

The invention became known as a “support cane with forearm rest” and transformed everyday life for injured users by avoiding the nerve pain caused by older axillary, or underarm, crutches.

Mid-20th century: the adjustable crutch and the “standard” logic

Later, A. R. Lofstrand Jr. developed crutches with height adjustment, helping to establish the modern forearm-crutch model.

In Europe, this type eventually became dominant.

Again, this was real progress, but not a revolution comparable to what happened in other technical fields in the 20th century.
The geometry was improved, manufacturing was rationalised, adjustments were added.

The crutch moved forward – but in small, almost irritating steps.

If we take “50 years ago” as a marker, roughly the 1970s, the picture is almost ironic:

• the world already had colour television,
• modern computing was underway,
• aviation had changed scale,
• and the crutch still looked rather furiously like… a crutch.

Of course, aluminium became more common, as did moulded handles, plastic cuffs and better-standardised industrial series. But fundamentally, it was still the same ancestral technical gesture: a vertical support replacing part of the function of the leg.

Today, in the 21st century: an ancient object that has barely mutated

Today, the crutch remains an ancient object that has, in substance, changed very little.

Recent versions with springs, energy return or more sophisticated geometry do exist, but they remain marginal compared with the classic model.

The historical observation is clear: manufacturing has been improved enormously, but the real walking experience with crutches has been reinvented only very little.

2011: the first ERGODYNAMIC crutch with a patented shock-absorption system appears

The historical finding is rather harsh: we have devoted wild amounts of creativity to technologies for comfort, leisure and distraction, while a tool as basic as the crutch was long treated as a simple stick with a slightly better finish.