Eli Whitney Museum

Mechanical Hands
In his sweeping history of America, Daniel Boorstein places Eli Whitney at the threshold of a revolution. For the skills of the artist…acquired only by long practice and experience and not available in this country, Whitney set out to substitute the correct and effective operations of machinery (Whitney’s words.) In Boorstein’s view, this was a Know-how revolution – a new way, not only of making things, but of making the machines that make things. Mechanical fingers replaced the craftsman’s fingers. Machines, not men, became specialized.

Artful Hands
Aaron Dollar is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. He directs The Yale Grab Lab which researches human and robotic hands and dexterous grasping.

Professor Dollar is liberating robots from factories. His Lab designs hands with radical simplicity and pliable materials that can adapt to the unpredictable challenges of household tasks. The Lab’s OpenHand Project offers its open source, low cost designs to all who will apply their inventiveness (and 3D printers) to crafting a next generation of prosthetics and extensions of human capacity.