Word: kamen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...quiet Sunday morning in Silicon Valley, I am standing atop a machine code-named Ginger - a machine that may be the most eagerly awaited and wildly, if inadvertently, hyped high-tech product since the Apple Macintosh. Fifty feet away, Ginger's diminutive inventor, Dean Kamen, is offering instruction on how to use it, which in this case means waving his hands and barking out orders...
...what is It? Ten months later, we still don't know for sure, and no one who does is talking, least of all inventor Dean Kamen, 49. The only public utterance from the denim-clad millionaire was an early statement that "the leaked proposal quoted several prominent technology leaders out of context, without their doubts, risks and maybes included." (He also reportedly cut off all contact with Kemper, although Kemper has denied this.) The project was promising, Kamen said, but the expectations generated by the press were "beyond whimsical...
...Kamen, whose invention credits include a portable drug-infusion pump, a compact dialysis machine and a wheelchair that can climb stairs, has refused to say another word on the subject. When pressed recently by a persistent journalist, he took her by the shoulders and asked, "What part of 'I'm not going to talk about this' don't you understand...
...best clue to Kamen's intentions may be the patent application he filed in late 2000 for a series of self-balancing "personal mobility vehicles." It's known that Kamen and his colleagues have been working for years on a clean, sealed-combustion Stirling engine that could run on any fuel, including hydrogen. The prevailing theory is that Ginger would combine Stirling technology with a stabilizing system pioneered in Kamen's stair-climbing wheelchair. (The wheelchair's code name, by the way, was Fred. Get it? Fred and Ginger.) The newest clues are the names of two websites registered...
...seems that we will never know for sure what Kamen has up his sleeve until Ginger makes her public debut, allegedly sometime in 2002. But Prof. Jerard is quick to note, “[Kamen] himself said [Ginger] was not going to change the world, and that it’s just a lot of hype someone came up with...