A TRANSPORT museum better known for its exhibitions on trains, trams and buses is now putting the humble wheelchair in the spotlight.

A TRANSPORT museum better known for its exhibitions on trains, trams and buses is now putting the humble wheelchair in the spotlight.

The Riverside Museum in Glasgow, Scotland's national museum of travel and transport, is preparing to unveil a trailblazing display focusing on the technological advancement of the mobility device.

The exhibit, which opens next week, will concentrate on wheelchairs as a mode of transport and the impact design improvements have had on users, from a functional and social perception perspective.

The museum recruited a group of wheelchair users to co-curate the display to ensure it accurately reflected the wheelchairs?? impact on those who use them.

Together they selected four chairs, which span almost 100 years in time and technological development, chosen from twenty-four wheelchair related objects in Glasgow Museums?? Collection.

The first wheelchair chosen by the group was made by J Foot and Sons Ltd, London from the early 1900s. It is the earliest chair on display and is typical of those used by WW1 veterans.

The second chair was designed to be used in developing countries and is entirely different to the WW1 chair, designed for maximum empowerment and independence. The third chair is one used by a child and the final was used by Britain's Number 1 wheelchair tennis player Gordon Reid.

The first known dedicated wheelchair, known as an "invalid's chair", was invented in 1595 and made for Phillip II of Spain. In 1655, Stephen Farfler, a paraplegic watchmaker, built a self-propelling chair on a three wheel chassis.