Stephan Farffler

{{Short description|German inventor}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Stephan Farffler

| image = Rollstuhl_Farfler_1655.jpg

| imagesize = 220px

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| birth_date = November 12, 1633

| birth_place = Altdorf bei Nürnberg, Holy Roman Empire

| death_date = October 24, 1689 (aged 56)

| death_place = Nürnberg or Altdorf bei Nürnberg

| occupation = Watchmaker, inventor

| education =

| nationality = German

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Stephan Farffler (1633 – October 24, 1689{{cite web |title=A Brief History of the Tricycle|publisher=retropedalcars.com |date=2012-12-02 |url=http://www.retropedalcars.com/tricycle_history1.htm |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130111090251/http://www.retropedalcars.com/tricycle_history1.htm |archive-date=11 January 2013 |url-status=dead }}), sometimes spelled Stephan Farfler, was a German watchmaker of the seventeenth century whose invention of a manumotive carriage in 1655 is widely considered to have been the first self-propelled wheelchair. The three-wheeled device is also believed to have been a precursor to the modern-day tricycle and bicycle."Medical Innovations - Wheelchair," Science Reporter, Volume 44, 2007, 397.

Farffler, who was either a paraplegicJane Bidder, Inventions We Use to Go Places (London: Franklin Watts, 2006, 18)Rory A. Cooper, Hisaichi Ohnabe, and Douglas A. Hobson, An Introduction to Rehabilitation Engineering (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2007, 131) or an amputee,Clive Richardson, Driving, the development and use of horse-drawn vehicles (B. T. Batsford, 1985, 136) also created a device for turning an hourglass at regular intervals and added chimes to the clocktower of Altdorf bei Nürnberg.Frederick James Britten et al., Britten's old clocks and watches and their makers (E. Methuen, 1973, 391)

the German WiKi says: either paraplegic as a result of an accident when aged three years;Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht Von den Nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern, Nürnberg 1730, [https://books.google.com/books?id=NaJOAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA302 S. 302] others describe him as a human with crippled legs Fabian Zilliken: Die Evolution des Fahrrads - Von der Laufmaschine zum "Custom(izing)" Artefakt, 2012, [https://books.google.com/books?id=WF1_C7soxWMC&pg=PT10 S. 10] („verkrüppelten“ - which could also mean disfigured or malformed and this might, for onlookers, be an accurate description when, as said, the accident happened at a very young age which would likely impair normal growth of the affected limbs)