Knight Ridder-Tribune
NEW YORK - For nearly a year, everyone waited for "It," an eccentric dreamer's secret invention said to be so magical it would change our very lives.
Speculation fueled hype, and hype stoked expectation like a coast-to-coast combustible reaction. Online buzz and prattle superheated the Net, as the techno-geekocracy chewed endlessly on the possibilities.
Was it a jet pack? A Jetsons-like hover craft? Maybe a portable car?
Well, no. It's a scooter. A very high-tech scooter - but a scooter just the same.
It was anti-climactic at first, when New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen showed up on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday to unveil the Segway Human Transporter, a two-wheeled, battery-operated transportation machine that balances itself.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Co-host Diane Sawyer may have spoken for much of America when she saw the contraption and said, "I'm tempted to say: 'That's it?'"
It's not sexy, it's not sleek. It looks like an unhandsome cross between a lawn mower and a child's toy. On top of that, it's a dull, utilitarian gray.
To be fair, the transport couldn't possibly have lived up to the incandescent imaginings of a gadget-hungry public ravenous for the Next Great Thing.
"Still," Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., said Monday, "once you strip away the hype, it's a pretty interesting little device."
The machine combines computer chips and gyroscopes to allow a person to stand perfectly balanced on the scooter as it reaches speeds of 12 m.p.h. or more.
"It stays under you, sensing where you are," said Gary Bridge, Segway's marketing vice president. "The invention is the balance."
The gyroscopes and other sensors monitor the user's center of gravity more than 100 times a second.
Kamen likes to suggest that the machine reads your thoughts and that if you think "forward," it goes forward. But, Bridge assures us, the scooter moves when the rider leans forward. Lean back and you go back.
There are no brakes. Neither is there a throttle. To steer, you merely turn the handlebars.
"It," or "Ginger," as the Segway was fondly called before its debut Monday on Broadway, reportedly cost as much as $100 million to make.
Kamen says it's the answer to urban congestion, making cities more livable by providing a clean option for short-distance travel. A person could tool around all day - on sidewalks, not in the street - for just pennies' worth of electricity.
Consumers might be able to have them by the end of next year, for about $3,000 each.
But the Segway will be in use well before that. Kamen has been working with the U.S. Postal Service, contemplating using the machines to deliver mail.
"Having postal workers use it is a stroke of genius," Saffo said. "The way to kill this invention is to let rich teenagers use it for a souped-up skateboard. But having sensible postmen use it - it tells the world we can co-exist with this."
Kamen is looking into the Segway's use in large factories and warehouses, in which workers must traverse large distances.
So confident are the millionaire inventor and his gang that they have purchased a huge factory near his Manchester, N.H., home to start cranking out scooters.
A small, fit man of 50 with jet-black hair and a penchant for wearing denim shirts, jeans, boots and an army jacket, Kamen had his parents on hand to share his moment of glory on Broadway.
At one point, Sawyer and co-host Charlie Gibson left the studio to ramble through nearby Bryant Park on Segways.
Smooth and silent, the machines allowed the clowning media superstars to glide like ice skaters in front of onlookers.
"Isn't it great?" enthused Lisa Reich, whose husband, Ron, is a Segway engineer. "It's like an extension of your body."
As she spoke, an obviously enthralled Gibson shouted to the crowd, "Look, I can ride with no hands." People dutifully applauded.
A book proposal about "Ginger" became public in January, and set off a media frenzy about "It."
Kamen has said he was livid about the exposure, but Saffo was dubious. Kamen said confidentiality was needed while he was securing patents.
Kamen's reputation as a visionary lent credibility to rumors that a super machine was being built in a 19th-century factory building above the Merrimack River.
He created the portable insulin pump and a briefcase-size kidney dialysis machine. More recently, Kamen invented a remarkable wheelchair that climbs stairs, operates over sand, and can move on just two of its wheels. The $20,000 Ibot, as it's called, can raise its seated occupant to eye-level of standing adults.
And it contains the gyroscope/balance technology behind the Segway, Bridge said.
Colleagues have long expressed awe over Kamen's engineering abilities.
But will Kamen's Segway change the world?
"I don't think it will," said Donald Hantula, an expert in technology and human behavior at Temple University. "I'm skeptical of all this hardware happiness hype."
Hantula - the author of a scholarly paper titled "Slips and Falls in Stores and Malls" - wonders about the Segway's safety. He thinks people will use it to shop, then overload themselves, just asking for trouble.
"What if people put on backpacks, then go 17 m.p.h. or so on the machine? That's a lot quicker than we're used to going."
Another possible drawback: Cities might not allow the Segway to be run on sidewalks.
Still, all that negativity seemed far from Kamen's mind as he rode down Broadway.
"Don't race down Times Square - promise me," Bridge admonished Kamen.
"Don't worry," Kamen said. "This is like a pair of magic sneakers."
