Twin sisters Matlhogonolo and Masego Mphahlele popularly known as the Mphahlele Twins came second at the Redbull Basement Global Finals in Istanbul Turkey.
Red Bull Basement is a global initiative that seeks to discover new innovations by university students and showcase them to a global audience. The aim of the competition is to inspire innovative technology ideas that can drive positive change in their local communities.
The twins were interviewed on the SABC News and they got to share their inspiration and journey in inventing the x-ray glasses. They spoke about how their high school soccer teammate got hurt back in 2019 and they had to accompany her to the hospital where they had to wait for hours for an x-ray.
The twins had the idea to invent a portable x-ray device shortly after the soccer accident. They first entered the Eskom Expo and unfortunately they didn’t win. The prototype took 2 years to build and the glasses have an infrared camera that takes pictures of the fracture that can be viewed on a small screen on the inside. The scans are then recorded and sent to the doctor.
The twins said the intention behind inventing the glasses is to improve the service at the hospitals starting with their hometown in Hammanskraal and reduce the big spaces occupied by bigger x-ray machines. They also envision their glasses being carried in the medical bags of nurses, paramedics in ambulances and even on the sports field.
Redbull gave the twins a mentor and covered the costs throughout the development process of the prototype. They got to go to Turkey for the Global Finals and they loved interacting with other young innovators. They came in second to contestants from the United States of America. Watch the full interview below.
The twins join other African inventors that have challenged and broken the general assumption that there can be no new inventions from Africa. In Zimbabwe, we have Maxwell Sangulani Chikumbutso who is a self-taught engineer. He is known for having developed a green energy technology that, he asserts, is revolutionary because it converts radio frequencies directly into clean and renewable energy.
Maxwell Chikumbutso created a radio-frequency powered television. This means that there is no power cable and the TV is powered purely by radio waves similar to WiFi and Bluetooth. Watch more on Chikumbutso’s television invention below.