Catholic Central seniors invent prosthetic typing device, qualify for national competition

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Ten creative Catholic Central High School seniors should be at the top of many West Michigan employers’ lists. Those seniors, all from Jeanine Gasper’s Pre-Engineering class, invented a prosthetic “hand,” made one teacher’s daily life easier, and qualified as one of five finalists in a national engineering competition.

And they did it for just $65—a fraction of the $60,000 to $100,000 it takes to develop a prosthetic hand.

Ms. Gasper requires the class to enter a national competition. The students selected the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) National Engineering Design Challenge (NEDC), a competition focused on the development of prosthetics. They chose religion teacher, Michael Martin, as the model for the device they call the Handy Typer.

“Mr. Martin was involved in a factory accident about 40 years ago and he lost his left hand,” says Ann Schumar, one of the students. “We had all had him in class and we knew how hard it was for him to type.”

It took the students about three hours to build the initial device with materials they purchased at Lowe’s. It straps onto Martin’s forearm and he rotates his arm back and forth to position the “fingers” on the keyboard.

“Mr. Martin took an online typing test without the device, and then with the device,” Schumar says. “After about 10 minutes of using it, his accuracy was three times better than it was without the device, and his words per minute improved 10 percent.”

Earlier this week the class spoke with a patent attorney.

All ten students and Ms. Gasper will attend the JETS competition in Washington D.C. February 25-27. First prize is $3,000; second and third places pay $1,500 each. Any winnings will go to the pre-engineering department for future classes.

A video presentation of the Handy Typer can be viewed here.

Source: Ann Schumar, Handy Typer Co-inventor; Jeanine Gasper, Catholic Central High School; Molly Klimas, Intent Public Relations

Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].