John Merlette has received the Jack Kennedy Memorial Alumni Achievement Award from his alma mater, Grove City College, Pennsylvania, for his work with carbon fiber, including development of the Springlite line of prosthetic devices in the 1980s. In 2001, Ottobock, Duderstadt, Germany, purchased Springlite, which was based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ottobock’s current carbon fiber blades are based on the Springlite design.
Merlette, now retired from engineering, used his expertise with carbon fiber to develop golf clubs, bicycle wheels, ski poles, ribs of satellites, a strut for a lunar module during the Apollo space program, and to solve the problem of ceramic tiles coming off the wings of space shuttles for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).