The inside story of Ginger, now officially Segway, the most hyped invention of recent years, and its maverick inventor.
Dean Kamen is a secretive multi-millionaire inventor who has been described as a cross between Thomas Edison and Willy Wonka. In February 1999 he invited Steve Kemper to write the inside book about the development of a secret new invention he codenamed Ginger. It was the accidental leak of Kemper's book proposal in which Steve Jobs of Apple was quoted as calling "IT" the biggest invention since the PC, that sparked off frenzied internet and media hype.
When in December 2001 this mystery invention was unveiled, far from being a science-fiction fantasy, a personal flying pack or antigravity device, it was revealed to be a self-balancing, battery-powered personal transporter called Segway.
It was dismissed by many as "just an electric scooter", and there was a terrible sense of anticlimax. But the jury is still out: the device is being tested by early adopters like the US Postal Service and various police forces and there are still many important people who believe that the Segway will change the way we live.
Whether or not the Segway finds a big consumer market and proves to be the solution to our inner city transportation problems is impossible to predict. But the inside story of larger-than-life Dean Kamen and his supernerd team of engineers, obstinately independent to the extreme of insisting on manufacturing and marketing his own product, while being wooed by all the major companies and such Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and John Doerr, the famous venture capitalist, makes fascinating reading.
'Code Name Ginger' is a cross between 'The Soul Of A New Machine' and 'No Logo', a really well-told, funny, not-too-techie, exciting behind-the-scenes story of the strange men behind the world's greatest innovations, illuminating just how a new invention turns into a product - or not.
