Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World (Hardcover)

"It's going to change the world."-Dean Kamen

They came from across the country and from the lab down the hall. Some left behind lucrative jobs, some moved their families. Each hand-picked engineer was drawn by the same irresistible lure: the chance to work with a brilliant, eccentric inventor on a secret project. Dean Kamen was already a millionaire with an impressive list of medical inventions to his name, but none of them had excited him like his newest world-changer. Extraordinary things were happening inside his New Hampshire laboratory, things no one could find out about-at least not yet.

This is the unforgettable story of "Ginger," officially named the Segway Human Transporter: a self-balancing, electric-powered people mover that Kamen called "magic sneakers." With the pacing and excitement of a suspense novel, Code Name Ginger documents the birth of a marvelous new technology and the feats of its remarkable inventor, his team of engineers, and the financiers who pursued them.

Steve Kemper was the only journalist granted complete access to the Ginger project as the machine was designed, prototyped, and readied for manufacture. He takes us inside a world of ingenious engineering, in which improbable ideas become real: wheelchairs climb stairs, scooters balance on two wheels, polluted water is made clean. He reveals Kamen as few have seen him: in the heat of invention, racing against time, caught between his idealistic beliefs and his obsession to make Ginger a commercial success. He chronicles the wheeling and dealing of high-rolling investors and New Economy kingpins from John Doerr to Steve Jobs. And he delivers vital business lessons about leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and innovation while recounting a technological adventure that will be studied and argued about for decades.

For anyone who has ever wondered what it was like inside Thomas Edison's lab or the Wright Brothers' garage, here is the twenty-first century equivalent. Step inside Dean Kamen's laboratory and discover the thrills and risks of invention. The Segway's story, like the machine itself, is appreciated best by climbing aboard and taking a ride.

About the Author
Steve Kemper is a journalist whose work has appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic, and other magazines. He lives in West Hartford, Connecticut.

"Lots of people talk and dream about changing the world. Dean Kamen is actually doing it."-Dan Rather, CBS News

"[Kamen] is a bundle of blaring contradictions: a driven, obsessive, yet fanciful figure who is part Thomas Edison and part Willy Wonka."-John Heilemann, Vanity Fair

From Code Name Ginger

:
I never tired of watching Dean perform his sales pitch to potential investors. It was entertaining and irresistible. Engineers know that heat always flows from a hot object to a cold object. When Dean began talking about his passion for Ginger to a cool investor, you could watch the target's molecules heat up and start dancing.

He and the investor would walk down to Dean's double helicopter hangar, where Dean would tear around on a Ginger until the target's eyes got big. Then Dean would switch the machine into a slower mode-known among the engineers as "CEO Mode"-and give the prospective investor a quick lesson. Dean liked to demonstrate Ginger's balance by shoving the billionaire rider in the chest: "See? See?" he would say, jabbing the guy hard. "It automatically compensates." Then the rider would roll off and his face would get that Ginger look that meant that the hook had gone in deep.

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