For Anne Bingham, it's a singed image: her 2-year-old daughter Victoria dangling like a stuffed doll from a makeshift contraption of bungee cords, a disassembled rowing machine and a wooden plank secured by a VCR stand and sewing machine.

"At first, she just hung there like a sausage," the East Northport mother recalled, flinging her own arms forward, lifelessly, in demonstration.

Then the toddler looked up.

It was a simple moment five years ago, but one that marked more progress than Victoria had ever made. The child, who doctors predicted would most likely see but never know what she was looking at, make noises but never talk, move but never walk, was, until that point, only able to turn her head from side to side. Mentally disabled , she stared unmoved at toys teased in front of her and had yet to smile.

"She was making zero progress," said Anne Bingham, a mother of four turned inventor after reaching a moment of clarity among a daily reality of desperation. She remembered her own frustrations spilling out one summer five years ago into tears after she let go of all the physical therapists and cried out to God.

"You gave me this baby," Bingham, 41, remembered saying through sobs. "I've done everything I can medically. I ask your help," she said. "I, literally in desperation, said, 'God help me help her.'"

The answer, she said, was the "TheraGlide."

"I thought, if I could lift the gravity off her body, she would be able to move off the ground," she said, explaining the logic behind the machine that she would ultimately patent and seek a manufacturer to build. "All those two years, the frustration was building and the ideas were swirling."

Sketched on a piece of paper are the images of the first four prototypes for the machine. Next to a picture of a little girl strapped in a harness are the notes "adjustable height in legs ... breaks down easily ... independent spring action in arms."

Against the advice of her husband, Craig Bingham Sr., Anne Bingham built the first model from household items, stabilizing a plank between the VCR stand and sewing machine and building an overhead track from a rowing machine. Victoria's progress was slow but steady, said Bingham, a teacher at the Chinese School in Dix Hills.

"All the family members said, 'Anne this is so mean. Take her out,'" she said. "Everyday my husband would say that beam is dangerous and then take the beam outside."

So, she compromised.

For the second model, a friend helped Bingham build a similar contraption from steel, using a wheelchair tire on top to facilitate movement from sitting to walking. The point of the mechanism, Bingham said, is to allow a child to follow the natural stages of development, which Victoria seemed to be doing.

By age 4, Victoria, a generally happy child whose face flashes to life at "Barney" videos, was standing in the machine and able to move across the length of the rectangular space it permitted. Or, as her mother put it, "She was spinning around like Tara Lipinski."

Now, the 7-year-old takes some of her first unaided steps, with tiny lights at the back of her sandals blinking with each movement. Her steps, however, are made slightly unsteady by the 20 pounds she recently gained from steroids used to control her daily seizures.

"It's little by little," said her home aide Sandra Palacio, a pediatrician in her native Venezuela who said she is awed by Bingham's dedication. Even as Bingham's husband underwent his second brain surgery to control seizures and the couple tries to make time for their other children -- Jessica, 13, Julie, 10, and Craig Jr., 5 -- Palacio said, Bingham works constantly to keep Victoria improving, celebrating the landmarks like when she recently used the bathroom on her own. "If she didn't do that, this girl wouldn't walk," Palacio said. "She'd be like a baby in a bed."

Bingham said that for other disabled children -- the thousands lying on mats and strapped to standing boards -- she was prompted to patent the product and idea behind it.

Before developing the final product, Bingham sought help from the Long Island Forum for Technology, LIFT, which provides technical assistance to small businesses and entrepreneurs on Long Island.

Executive director Patricia Howley said LIFT helps about 60 inventors a year but that Bingham stood out.

"We spent a lot of time on hers, more than we do on most. It was obviously something that was going to make a life better," Howley said. "This was something that was going to help a child to move. That was extraordinary."

LIFT helped Bingham produce some of the drawings, build a prototype different from the makeshift one at home, and explore "manufacturability."

"Your imagination can be better than manufacturing capabilities," Howley said.

Such, however, was not the case with Bingham's creation, she added

Al Walker, a lawyer in Melville who helped secure the patents, said they went through unusually fast. Whereas it usually takes years, Bingham had hers within months.

"She understood the technology, she understood the child, she understood the medicine," Walker said. "She never gave up."

With the patents and prototype in hand, Bingham sold the product at about cost to Rifton Equipment, a manufacturer of products for physically disabled children. The Chester, N.Y.-based company said it hopes to market the product in 2005 but that it first has to go through development and testing.

"We definitely consider it innovative," sales manager Tony Potts said. "We feel this is something that we can bring to the marketplace that is not there."

He said while the company is often approached with ideas, it couldn't ignore Bingham's after she drove to the company with her plans. "We had to take her seriously because she came and knocked on the door," he said. "She was very persuasive."

Bingham said she had little choice.

"I had to do it," she said. "I wanted to be able to say, ... 'Mommy tried her very best.'"