Drinking with Mad Scientist Dean Kamen

Dean & his Segway

May, 2007 (Chicago):  NCIIA, a great organization that encourages technology entrepreneurship by preparing engineering concepts incubated on the campuses to launch, was at the Chicago Art Museum to participate in presentation of the Lemelson-MIT "EurekaFest" Awards to technology innovators.  I was part of the scene and our patron, the Lemelson Foundation, had invited an impressive guest-list.  Included was the great but enigmatic Dean Kamen - originator of the FIRST competition (similar to NCIIA's work, but targeted at high school age science whiz-kids) and inventor of numerous products including the Segway.

Father Jack had a bent for the dramatic

I was cutting through the crowd with a glass of fine red wine when I spotted the diminutive Kamen, clad in trademark denim work shirt and pants.  Strode right up and introduced myself - he certainly knew of NCIIA and I also had a personal card to play: My mother-in-law and her late husband had owned a vacation home on the perimeter of StoneBridge Golf & Country Club in  Boca in the 1980's-90's.  Their next door neighbors and friends were Dean's parents, Jack and Evelyn.

Jack had been an illustrator for Weird Science,  Tales from the Crypt, and MAD Magazine in the 1960's.

Well, Dean and I shot the breeze for a bit; he had mixed memories of Boca Raton and obviously preferred the inventor's bench and the life of the mind to life on the golf course.  Dean was a bit of a nebbish - but he's the awesome nebbish who invented the Segway!  He seemed interested in my tales of Discovery Channel's groundbreaking Australian co-pro "Beyond 2000" and two years later he would combine with Discovery's Planet Green network to create the series "Dean of Invention."

Valpo "Reverser"

We saw the awards given out, and the wine bottles cleared away.  Next morning, early, I drove into Indiana to pay a visit to the Valparaiso U. engineering department and survey their Tech. Entrepreneurship program.

Toward the end of the tour, Dr. Doug Tougaw stunned me with a visit to the lab where his senior class quirky cap-stoners had reverse-engineered a Segway to build a clone from scratch, "for less than $1,800!"  Doug had his guys fire that thang up and give it a go.

Total boldness: the vehicle wheeled and dealed.

Innovation Run Wild

I marveled, and later that evening wrote to my new friend Dean, alerting him to the work of these enterprising engineers.

I imagined he might take an interest in the program, or at least offer a word of encouragement.  However, he never acknowledged my note, nor our conversation.  Oh well.

... The great screenplay "The A-Rabs Are Coming! The A-Rabs Are Coming!"  includes a magnificent scene with a pair of octogenarian blue-bloods cutting figure eights in the driveway to their Nantucket manse on a pair of birthday Segways.  Thank you, Dean Kamen!  Thank you.