Code Name Ginger

Dean Kamen is a secretive multimillionaire inventor who has been described as a cross between Thomas Edison and Willy Wonka. In February 1999 he invited Steve Kemper to write the inside story of the development of a secret new invention he codenamed Ginger. It was the accidental leak of Kemper's book proposal in which Steve Jobs of Apple was quoted as calling "It" the biggest invention since the PC, that sparked off frenzied internet and media hype. When in December 2001 this mystery invention was unveiled, far from being a science-fiction fantasy, a personal flying pack or anti-gravity device, it was revealed to be a self-balancing, battery-powered personal transporter called Segway. It was dismissed by many as "just an electric scooter", and there was a terrible sense of anti-climax. But the jury is still out: the device is being tested by early adopters like the US Postal Service and various police forces, and the consumer launch is not yet announced. There are still many important people who believe that the Segway will change the way we live.
Whether or not the Segway finds a big consumer market and proves to be the solution to our inner-city transportation problems is impossible to predict, but the inside story of larger-than-life Dean Kamen and his supernerd team of engineers - obstinately independent to the extreme of insisting on manufacuring and marketing his own product, while being wooed by all the major companies and such Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and John Doerr, the famous venture capitalist - makes fascinating reading. "Code Name Ginger" is a cross between "The Soul of a New Machine" and "No Logo", a humorous, not-too-techie, behind-the-scenes story of the strange men behind the world's greatest innovations, illuminating just how a new invention turns into a product - or not.