Virgil
12-22-2008, 01:50 PM
http://www.esquire.com/features/dean-kamen-1208
================
http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/j1/dean-kamen-water-distiller-1208-lg.jpg
Kamen's revolutionary vapor-compression water distiller, which can make pure medicinal-grade water out of anything that's wet, including urine or toxic waste. After he finished the prototype, he realized -- shades of the Segway -- that there was no real market for it.
The inventor of the Segway and more now has an idea worth tens of millions of lives. But no one cares. Tracking Lord Dumpling's genius on his seceded island of geekery.
Here comes Dean Kamen on a Segway, zipping down the hill of his private island like something out of a Bond movie. He floats past his private helicopter. Past his amphibious landing craft. His lighthouse rises up behind him. He's wearing his uniform, the one he wears whether he's tinkering with an engine or visiting the White House: work boots, blue jeans, and a short-sleeved work shirt. He's fifty-seven but still skinny as a ten-year-old, with a lean face and full head of Superman hair. He wears a dead-serious expression as he's perched up there on his electric gizmo, even looks a bit regal, which is sort of appropriate when you consider the rules of his alternate universe -- on his tiny private island off the coast of Connecticut, he's not just the man who invented the Segway and the stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBOT and the first portable dialysis machine and a new water filter called the Slingshot that could literally change the world, if he could only get the damn world to cooperate. He's also Lord Dumpling, leader of the Empire of North Dumpling. Dumpie to his friends. He sort of seems serious about this, in a whimsical way, and now Lord Dumpling sweeps right by on his royal scooter, heading down to the landing to greet his guests from America.
He has seceded from the United States, you see, having notified the president himself, and Kamen's vision of better living through technology is under assault from the usual gaggle of small minds. As his guests clamber off the boat and walk down the dock to greet Dumpling, two clean-cut young engineer types rush out of the bushes waving signs that say COALITION AGAINST TECHNOLOGY and GREEN IS FOR WIMPS.
"Protesters," Kamen says, the same benighted fools who failed to immediately ban cars and change the way cities are designed to welcome the Segway.
As the protesters drop their signs and go back to work, his bemused guests follow him up the hill, past a sign reading DUMP DUMPIE IN '08, plodding like mere humans as Kamen glides along beside them.
When they reach the house, a flawlessly renovated caretaker's cottage built around the lighthouse, Kamen urges them to enjoy the catered lunch and slips off to join his eighty-three-year-old mother. As he will be happy to tell you, he rarely eats lunch and hasn't had breakfast in thirty years. Unless someone reminds him, he can go two or three days without eating anything at all.
He emerges again when the guests, thirty in all, gather in the living room, an elegant little space with views of Long Island Sound from every window. "My people told me, Dean, keep it simple," he begins. "Unfortunately, my greatest asset is ADD."
The man is small in stature, has a slight Long Island lilt, and tends to speak in italics. He's attracted a curious and enthusiastic group of scientists and business leaders to have them participate in transforming North Dumpling into the greenest nation on earth, and create a proof-of-concept center for all of Kamen's wild ideas.
<snipped>http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/j1/dean-kamen-water-distiller-1208-lg.jpg
================
http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/j1/dean-kamen-water-distiller-1208-lg.jpg
Kamen's revolutionary vapor-compression water distiller, which can make pure medicinal-grade water out of anything that's wet, including urine or toxic waste. After he finished the prototype, he realized -- shades of the Segway -- that there was no real market for it.
The inventor of the Segway and more now has an idea worth tens of millions of lives. But no one cares. Tracking Lord Dumpling's genius on his seceded island of geekery.
Here comes Dean Kamen on a Segway, zipping down the hill of his private island like something out of a Bond movie. He floats past his private helicopter. Past his amphibious landing craft. His lighthouse rises up behind him. He's wearing his uniform, the one he wears whether he's tinkering with an engine or visiting the White House: work boots, blue jeans, and a short-sleeved work shirt. He's fifty-seven but still skinny as a ten-year-old, with a lean face and full head of Superman hair. He wears a dead-serious expression as he's perched up there on his electric gizmo, even looks a bit regal, which is sort of appropriate when you consider the rules of his alternate universe -- on his tiny private island off the coast of Connecticut, he's not just the man who invented the Segway and the stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBOT and the first portable dialysis machine and a new water filter called the Slingshot that could literally change the world, if he could only get the damn world to cooperate. He's also Lord Dumpling, leader of the Empire of North Dumpling. Dumpie to his friends. He sort of seems serious about this, in a whimsical way, and now Lord Dumpling sweeps right by on his royal scooter, heading down to the landing to greet his guests from America.
He has seceded from the United States, you see, having notified the president himself, and Kamen's vision of better living through technology is under assault from the usual gaggle of small minds. As his guests clamber off the boat and walk down the dock to greet Dumpling, two clean-cut young engineer types rush out of the bushes waving signs that say COALITION AGAINST TECHNOLOGY and GREEN IS FOR WIMPS.
"Protesters," Kamen says, the same benighted fools who failed to immediately ban cars and change the way cities are designed to welcome the Segway.
As the protesters drop their signs and go back to work, his bemused guests follow him up the hill, past a sign reading DUMP DUMPIE IN '08, plodding like mere humans as Kamen glides along beside them.
When they reach the house, a flawlessly renovated caretaker's cottage built around the lighthouse, Kamen urges them to enjoy the catered lunch and slips off to join his eighty-three-year-old mother. As he will be happy to tell you, he rarely eats lunch and hasn't had breakfast in thirty years. Unless someone reminds him, he can go two or three days without eating anything at all.
He emerges again when the guests, thirty in all, gather in the living room, an elegant little space with views of Long Island Sound from every window. "My people told me, Dean, keep it simple," he begins. "Unfortunately, my greatest asset is ADD."
The man is small in stature, has a slight Long Island lilt, and tends to speak in italics. He's attracted a curious and enthusiastic group of scientists and business leaders to have them participate in transforming North Dumpling into the greenest nation on earth, and create a proof-of-concept center for all of Kamen's wild ideas.
<snipped>http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/j1/dean-kamen-water-distiller-1208-lg.jpg