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Jerry Jalava with his prosthetic USB finger.
Pictures: Jerry Jalava/Flickr

Arjun Ramachandran
March 18, 2009 - 11:37AM

A computer programmer who lost half his finger after his motorbike crashed into a deer has had the finger replaced with a USB drive.

Jerry Jalava, from Finland, says the two-gigabyte prosthetic finger is not permanently attached to his hand, allowing him to leave his finger in the computer slot and "pick it up after I'm ready".

The silicon prosthetic looks like a normal finger, but can be peeled back at the tip to reveal the USB drive.

Mr Jalava uses the drive as storage for "photos, movies and other useful files", The Telegraph said.

"When Jerry told doctors what he did for a living they joked he should have a USB 'finger drive' but that was good enough for him, and he set about making one," the paper said.

Mr Jalava said he had been flooded with questions about the finger after a friend blogged about his unique prosthetic.

He set about answering some of those questions on his own blog.

"First of all it is not attached permanently in to my body, it is [a] removable prosthetic which has [a] USB memorystick inside it," he wrote.

"Secondly when I'm using the USB, I just leave my finger inside the slot and pick it up after I'm ready."

He also described the crash, which happened last July.

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"Last Wednesday while I was driving my one week old Ducati Monster 696 from work to home, I crashed into a deer," he wrote.

"I slided approximately eight metres with the deer on front and after that bounced from side to side 11 metres with the bike.

"Last slide was approximately 58 metres with my left hand under the bike.

"After the bike stopped I got up and took my helmet and gloves off ... that's when I realised that half of my finger was missing."

Mr Jalava said he had installed a number of programs on the USB finger that allowed him to do programming.

He was also working on a more advanced USB finger that would feature wireless tracking.

"I'm planning to use the other prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have removable fingertip and RFID [radio frequency identification] tag," he wrote.