April 5: The Inventive Mr. Kamen

Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway PT, one of the most highly publicized and least successful inventions of the past two decades, was born on this date in 1951. The Segway is a very neat, ecological, self-balancing, two-wheeled low-speed transport that unfortunately has little use in hard-core urban environments or highway-dependent suburbs and rural areas. Kamen — the son of MAD magazine illustrator Jack Kamen — also invented the first drug infusion pump, an all-terrain electric wheelchair, and the Slingshot, an inexpensive water purification system. He is the founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which runs student competition all around the world in robotics and other technologies; more than a million young people have participated so far. Among his many honors is induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 and the 2006 United Nations Global Humanitarian Action Award. “I don’t work on a project unless I believe that it will dramatically improve life for a bunch of people.” —Dean Kamen