The principle here that matters is “personal electric low-skill vehicle”. Segway tried it first, but electric scooters were way cheaper, and the GPS/smartphone technology helped it a lot.
Dean Kamen is so cool to me, because he’s pretty unknown but has had such a positive impact on the world, especially with his STEM outreach to school kids. I got to meet him once briefly after the FRC national championship in 2014, he was going somewhere but still stopped to talk to us briefly and I thanked him and he signed my team hat.
Gingerthe Segway was supposed to revolutionize the way we view cities!TBF electric scooters are doing that now. Dude was just ahead of his time.
Also if you take “the way we view cities” literally, they definitely did since they became a popular way for tourists to view a city.
Ahead of his time? It is a different product working with a different (and far older) principle?
The principle here that matters is “personal electric low-skill vehicle”. Segway tried it first, but electric scooters were way cheaper, and the GPS/smartphone technology helped it a lot.
Useful product but where is the revolution
In the wheels obviously
The hype leading up to its reveal was wild.
I remember trying one in a section of a science museum as a kid!
There’s a great episode of The Dollop about the Segway guy. 565 - Dean Kamen and It.
Dean Kamen is so cool to me, because he’s pretty unknown but has had such a positive impact on the world, especially with his STEM outreach to school kids. I got to meet him once briefly after the FRC national championship in 2014, he was going somewhere but still stopped to talk to us briefly and I thanked him and he signed my team hat.
I wouldn’t recommend you listen to the Dollop episode though, they tend to mercilessly mock their subjects.
CEO fell off a cliff with his Segway and died
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Heselden#Death
Crucially to the mythology, it was the CEO who recently acquired the company, not the inventor who pioneered it