I hope my knee gets fixed before I have to resort to the Bath chair, I swear. Did you know that the Bath chair (not to be confused with the sedan chair, which was carried by two men) was an early form of wheelchair designed by John Dawson in 1783 to aid elderly visitors who came to take the waters in Bath, England? While wheelchairs were invented in China many centuries before (and paraplegic clockmaker Stephan Farfler invented a self-propelled one that was a forerunner to the bicycle), they didn’t show up in England until the 16th century, and weren’t widely used until the Bath chair came along. All of them, however, still required attendants to push the chairs. Self-propelled ones didn’t really come into use until the early 20th century. For these and other facts (and pics) about wheelchair history, be sure to visit The Science Museum’s blog.