Ernesto Blanco
Innovator of Devices Which Assist the Physically Challenged

Born and raised in Havana, Cuba, Ernesto Blanco is one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's leading teachers and practitioners of invention. Most of his over a dozen patented inventions have been in textile machinery, surgical apparatus, or devices that assist the physically challenged.
    Born in 1922, Ernesto Blanco excelled in academics and upon completion of high school was accepted to study engineering at Havana University.  Upon completion of his degree, Blanco worked as Chief Draftsman of Havana's City Planning Department before coming to the United States in 1949.  Working days as a Chief Surveyor for an Albany, New York firm, Blanco spent his evenings attending classes and earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute.   Deciding to return to Cuba, Blanco was hired to direct the School of Mechanical Engineering at Havana's Universidad de Villanueva. In fact, Blanco designed the University's updated laboratories and created its curriculum. In 1960, he returned to the US to teach at MIT and Tufts University.  During this time, Blanco worked with the United States State Department, helping to develop Latin American cooperative engineering programs. In his own work, Blanco began to focus on industrial design.
    By 1969, Blanco was a specialist in the design of textile machinery. He spent five years as a consultant before founding his own business, Universal Textile Corp., in 1974. Blanco's textile inventions include devices that detect faulty needles in knitting machines (patented 1977); center and spread out rolls of fabric; and control the tension of yarn during weaving. Blanco was also inventing in other areas. For example, under contract with the National Science Foundation, he designed the first of his many aids for the blind, a Braille Cell Display System.

    In 1977, Blanco returned to MIT as Adjunct Full Professor in the Design Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department. He teaches Engineering Design and Graphics, Kinematics, and "The Process of Innovation." Blanco is also a consultant to many major industrial and medical firms. As an inventor, Blanco continues to develop aids for the handicapped, especially the blind, as well as more strictly medical devices.
    Blanco's first major invention for the handicapped was a stair-climbing wheelchair, in 1962. A National Inventors Council contest offering a $5,000 prize for the first such device had been running since 1959 without receiving an entry that actually worked; Blanco's did. His model had a set of retractable, spring-loaded spokes that could extend beyond the wheel rim to function as pinions, keeping the chair upright as it was powered up the stairs.     
    Blanco's many other patented medical inventions include three surgical microstaplers (one for implanted corneas), an apparatus for monitoring medication delivery into the bloodstream, an intraocular lens that can be pre-placed in the eye before cataract surgery, and a three-dimensional robot-arm positioner for focused ultrasonic transducers. Under contract, Blanco has also invented various instruments for noninvasive arthroscopic and ophthalmic microsurgery.
    Blanco has also designed many improvements to Braille writing machines. Because each letter of the Braille alphabet requires a pattern of one to six indentations, Braille typewriters can be very fatiguing to use. While teaching at Tufts, Blanco designed a model that provided electric power for the embossing force, and applied the force only once per letter rather than once per indentation. Blanco's Braille typewriter was commercialized and is still widely used.
    Today, Ernesto Blanco remains one of MIT's most highly respected creative innovators and educators and his many inventions have contributed vastly to the ever changing medical landscape.