The Genius of the Tinkerer
Sep 27, 2010, 18:34 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Steven Johnson)
[ Thanks to Steve
for this link. ]
"In the year following the 2004 tsunami, the Indonesian
city of Meulaboh received eight neonatal incubators from
international relief organizations. Several years later, when an
MIT fellow named Timothy Prestero visited the local hospital, all
eight were out of order, the victim of power surges and tropical
humidity, along with the hospital staff's inability to read the
English repair manual.
"Mr. Prestero and the organization he cofounded, Design That
Matters, had been working for several years on a more reliable, and
less expensive, incubator for the developing world. In 2008, they
introduced a prototype called the NeoNurture. It looked like a
streamlined modern incubator, but its guts were automotive.
Sealed-beam headlights supplied the crucial warmth; dashboard fans
provided filtered air circulation; door chimes sounded alarms. You
could power the device with an adapted cigarette lighter or a
standard-issue motorcycle battery. Building the NeoNurture out of
car parts was doubly efficient, because it tapped both the local
supply of parts and the local knowledge of automobile repair. You
didn't have to be a trained medical technician to fix the
NeoNurture; you just needed to know how to replace a broken
headlight."
Complete Story
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