Lahman: RIT's Jon Schull launches revolution

• Jon Schull has built a community of volunteers to design and make prosthetics.

Revolutions usually begin with a simple moment.

For Jon Schull, it happened after watching a video on YouTube.

In that video, a South African carpenter explained how he'd cut off two of his fingers and discovered that suitable prosthetics weren't available. With the help of a friend, they designed their own device, produced it using a 3-D printer, and shared the design on the Internet, hoping others would benefit.

Schull, an RIT professor, saw two comments under the video from folks who said, I've got a 3-D printer. I could do this.

He posted his own comment to the video. "If you have a printer or need a hand, put yourself on this map," he wrote, adding a link to a Google Map he'd created.

"I called their bluff," he said, "and they called mine."

Within a few weeks, 70 people had added themselves to the map, and a revolution was born. Wittingly or not, Schull had launched an organization to connect 3-D printing hobbyists with children and adults looking for an affordable prosthetic finger, hand or forearm. A formal website — EnablingTheFuture.org — was launched soon after and has attracted hundreds of volunteers, each eager to contribute in their own way.

Schull described his journey at an event I hosted last weekend, part of our "Meet the Inventor" series at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. The central challenge is that prosthetics are expensive — typically more than $10,000 — and they're particularly difficult to adapt for kids. A 3-D printed device typically costs around $50 and can be designed to suit each individual's needs.

Schull showed an audience of about 50 people at RMSC videos of kids grinning ear to ear as they showed off a custom-designed prosthetic hand. In additional to being functional, they are designed to look cool — one model looks like the superhero Iron Man.

"They get to be the cool kid in the class," Schull explained, "having previously been that odd kid with the funny hand. They love it."

That's an incredible sight, but the real impact of what Schull has done is even bigger than those individual smiles.

Schull's triumph is in assembling a group of individuals who likely would not have acted on their own in a way where each one is empowered to make a small contribution to a much larger goal. Folks like Elizabeth Jackson, an RIT student who's working on her own prosthetic design. It's an exoskeletal device for those whose arms and hands are intact but not fully functional through maybe a stroke or muscular dystrophy. She's working to make a device that provides hand and finger movement with no electrical components, powered solely by the wearer's elbow movement.

Jackson showed the most recent version of her design during Schull's presentation, and one young woman lingered afterward. Her brother is unable to use his hand, and she wondered whether a design like Jackson's was something that might be available. Schull was eager to speak with her and make arrangements to bring her brother to their lab for further exploration.

I imagine this is a conversation that Schull has had dozens of times in the 18 months since he posted his comment on that YouTube video. And while I'm sure it's enormously rewarding to be able to impact and transform someone's life, Schull's story is about so much more.

Schull didn't simply become a maker of prosthetic hands. He launched a movement. He created a community of thousands of people to do this work, to collaborate and share ideas and reach out to others who can help.

And they're just getting started.

Sean Lahman's column appears in print on Sundays. Follow him on Twitter @SeanLahman, or reach him at (585) 258-2369.