What can and cannot be said
There is no reliable answer to who made the first prosthetic limb. The title’s claim of a single “first” does not survive contact with the evidence. Artificial limbs of some kind were made in antiquity, and the oldest ones were made by unnamed craftspeople whose work was either lost or is known only from a few surviving pieces. The sensible question is different: when do we start to see named makers, written designs and a recognizable trade? That begins in Europe in the sixteenth century.
Ancient claims
Several early claims circulate. Greek and Roman writers describe a wooden foot and an iron hand. An ancient Indian hymn is sometimes read as describing an iron leg. Archaeologists have found artificial toes in Egypt and a bronze-and-wood leg at Capua. The important point is that none of them names a maker, and some are legends. They show that the idea existed, not who deserves credit.
Ambroise Paré and his collaborators
The first well-documented figure is Ambroise Paré, a French military surgeon of the sixteenth century. He is best known for promoting the use of ligatures to tie off blood vessels after amputation, a practice that gave patients a better chance of survival than burning the stump with hot irons. In his writings he also described artificial limbs: a hand with moving fingers and a spring mechanism, an arm, and a leg with a locking knee and a hinged foot.
Paré did not necessarily build these himself. He mentions a craftsman, often named as Le Petit Lorrain, who worked as a locksmith or clockmaker and made mechanical hands. This partnership of surgeon and metalworker was typical. The surgeon understood the stump and the maker understood springs and catches, and the same skills went into automata and early mechanical clocks. Many of the devices in his books were meant for armored soldiers or wealthy patients, because the cost of such work was very high.
Verduyn and the non-locking knee
In 1696, a Dutch craftsman, Pieter Verduyn, is credited with a below-knee prosthesis that included a hinge and a leather thigh cuff, intended to let the knee move without a locking mechanism. He is often named as an important step toward more natural walking, but specific details of his design come from later descriptions, so it is wise to treat it as an early example, not a clean invention.
James Potts and the Anglesey leg
In 1800, a London maker named James Potts produced an articulated wooden leg with a knee joint and an ankle linked by cords, often described as catgut, that coordinated motion. The Marquess of Anglesey wore one after losing his leg at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and the design took his name. It was brought to the United States in the late 1830s, where makers modified it with springs and concealed cords. This is probably the best-known example of a limb that moved in a coordinated way and passed from one country to another.
Civil War craftsmen
The American Civil War (1861 to 1865) changed the scale of the trade. Tens of thousands of soldiers lost limbs, and governments in both the North and the South began to pay for replacements. James Edward Hanger, a young Confederate soldier who lost a leg early in the war, designed his own jointed leg from wood and became a maker. Many other craftsmen also entered the field, and patent filings for artificial limbs rose in the following decades. Makers also experimented with new materials, including vulcanized rubber for feet and cushioning, which became available in the mid-nineteenth century. Some of these makers advertised their products widely, and the language of the time often exaggerated how natural they felt.
This is the period in which “limb making” became a business with workshops, catalogs and trained fitters. It also depended on advances in surgery. Operations performed with surgical anesthesia and cleaner technique, and later antiseptic surgery, produced stumps that healed in better shape, which made fitting easier.
Why “first” is the wrong frame
Prosthetics evolved from many small improvements by many hands. The metalsmith, the carpenter, the surgeon and the patient each shaped the result. The names that survive are those that reached print or patents, which favors Europeans and Americans who could publish books or file patents. Craftspeople elsewhere certainly also made devices, but the documents are scarce. Rather than a single moment of invention, the documented history shows a gradual shift from unique, one-off pieces for rich patients to a standard trade serving veterans, workers and ordinary people.