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 journalist Steve Kemper to record the development of a secret new invention he had codenamed Ginger. It was the accidental leak of Kemper's book proposal (in which Apple's Steve Jobs was quoted as calling 'IT' the biggest invention since the PC) that sparked off frenzied internet and international media hype. Then in December 2001 this mystery invention was finally unveiled. Far from being a science-fiction fantasy, a personal flying pack or antigravity 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 anticlimax. But the jury is still out: the device is being tested by early adopters like the US Postal Service and various police forces. 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 this inside story of larger-than-life visionary Dean Kamen, obstinately independent to the extreme of insisting on manufacturing 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, famous venture capitalist, and his supernerd team of engineers makes enthralling reading. Code Name Ginger is a cross between The Soul of a New Machine and No Logo - a really well-told; funny, not-too-techie, exciting 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 as the case may prove to be...