Archie LaFreniere recounts Frank Miller hospital-bed invention, 1989

Locator map: Beaver Island highlighted within the Beaver Island archipelago — Took place at Beaver IslandLocator plate © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); depths NOAA; names USGS GNIS. How the plates are drawn.

Event

Date: 1989-02
Kind: Publication
Where: Beaver Island
Eras: Modern era
Concepts: historytechnologyhealthcarecommunication
Within: Beaver Island

Summary

The February 1989 issue published Archie LaFreniere’s contested account of a late-1920s hand-cranked hospital bed designed by Frank Miller on Beaver Island.

Evidence limits

The claim requires patent, workshop, medical-device, or other independent historical corroboration.

Sources

“Did You Know???,” Beaver Beacon, February 1989.
Publishes the claim that Frank Miller operated a Beaver Island machine shop in the late 1920s and designed a hand-cranked hospital bed without obtaining a patent. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1989-02_Beaver-Beacon
Beaver Beacon, February 1989, held issue PDF, source scan.
The held twenty-page February issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR; this is a source-qualified local-history claim.
data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1989-02_Beaver-Beacon

Added 4 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Archie LaFreniere recounts Frank Miller hospital-bed invention, 1989”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/beaver-island-frank-miller-hospital-bed-story-1989/, accessed [date], citing “Did You Know???,” Beaver Beacon, February 1989. (and 1 further source listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-04. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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