Ginsterblum Motor Chair

GINSTERBLUM

Posted By: Marilyn O'Connor (email)
Date: 11/5/2009 at 20:14:23

Mitchell County Press
July 1947.

Ginsterblum Sells
First Motor Chair
To Minnesota Man

Kenneth Ginsterblum, crippled Osage young man, who designed an electric wheel chair for his own use and then acquired patents and began to manufacture the chairs, recently sold his first unit to Eddie Barnes, Fairmont, Minnesota, arthritis victim, who had been bedfast for the past ten years.

The Fairmont Daily Sentinel carried a story of Barnes in a recent issue and showed pictures of the Minnesota cripple operating his new Mitchell Motor Chair which he purchased from the Osage man.

For the past ten years, Barnes had conducted a magazine subscription business and sold insulation by telephone from his bed. Eddie heard about Ginsterblum's chair and the Osage man went to Fairmont to demonstrate it. Barnes immediately bought the chair. Within minutes after receiving delivery, Barnes was down town under his own power and he now lives a comparatively normal life.

Ginsterblum's chair has been demonstrated before the Veterans Administration and a model is now on trial in a Chicago hospital. Backers of the Osage man hope that the government will adopt the chair as standard equipment in veterans hospitals, enabling Ginsterblum to manufacture the chairs in quanity. So far all chairs have been manufactured by Carl Obermier in a factory set up in the Ginsterblum garage.