Portable Receptacle Essay

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Portable Receptacle Imagine you were in a horrible accident and you loss the use of your right arm and leg. You’re a righty. That makes things hard enough, plus you can’t walk. People without the use of a body part(s) probably feel bad enough because they cant do things that they were able to before what ever caused their loss of limb(s). Some become incredibly depressed. Imagine having to be “babied” like a small child because of a single accident. Small things like being able to support yourself in a single way might bring you some satisfaction. Feeding yourself, a way we survive, could bring this simple satisfaction. To support black history month, we, students, were told to create a model and write an essay about an invention made by an African American Inventor. My invention was the portable receptacle, which was invented by Bessie Virginia Griffin. The inventions purpose was to help permanent bed ridden people and people in wheelchairs eat without the use of their hands. Griffin got the idea for this invention after helping in hospitals during World War II as a physical therapist. The first portable receptacle was a contraption that helped people with nonfunctioning limbs or no limbs eat from a mouthpiece connected to a tube, which was connected to a larger machine. This first design, however, seemed to be to big and bulky for hospitals, so in turn they barely sold because hospital rooms did not have enough space for it. The second design was much smaller and called “The Portable Receptacle Support.” This was a tube connected to a bowl on one end and a mouthpiece on the other. The entire contraption was connected to a brace in which the patient or user put around their neck. It allowed the person to eat alone and at their own pace. My first attempt, and plan, in making this model was by using a wire hanger that I found in my closet to create the neck

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