Posted on 12/01/2001 7:11:17 AM PST by B Knotts
The wait is over. After nearly a year of wild speculation, New Hampshire’s own Mister Wizard, Dean Kamen, will reveal what “IT” is on national television Monday morning. Kamen, a Bedford inventor, entrepreneur and the founder of a national student robotics competition, sounded remorseful yesterday that the big announcement of his latest invention will not happen here in New Hampshire. Instead, it will be ABC’s “Good Morning America” that will reveal the secret, he confirmed. “What’s true is on Monday we will be in New York, and I must say I’m a little disappointed that we have to do it in New York,” he said. “I love New Hampshire.” But, he went on, “Our investor group is literally global in scale, and the supporters that have made all this possible and their partners are global, and New York is the media center that they believe is the appropriate place to do the announcement.” So New York it will be. Kamen promised a “special event” immediately after the “Good Morning America” broadcast. The event is planned for a luxurious Manhattan studio — which includes a “rooftop shooting deck,” a detail that may only further inflame speculation that Kamen has invented some sort of personal flying machine. But further details will not be available until next week. Asked whether a newly built plant in Bedford is where “Ginger” will be built, Kamen said, “Until Monday, we’re not going to talk about that.” However, some in Bedford have their suspicions. Town planning director Karen White said yesterday that Kamen’s company, ACROS, is expected to receive a certificate of occupancy for the new manufacturing plant, at 14 Technology Drive. “They’re not telling us anything about what’s going to be manufactured there. And they don’t have to. “But the timing is curious, that they are coming in at the same time they’re making this big announcement,” White said. So will Monday’s announcement live up to all the hype? “Nothing could live up to people’s wild imaginations,” Kamen said. “The only public statement I’ve made is the one I’ll go with: We’re proud of what we’re doing. But no, nothing can live up to all that. . . .” The buzz began last January with a report by Inside.com on an upcoming book that reportedly would reveal that Kamen had invented a device — nicknamed “Ginger” and referred to as “IT” — that could change the world as much as the personal computer and the World Wide Web have. Internet-fueled speculation soared to stratospheric heights in the following months. Entire Web sites (including www.theitquestion.com and www.ginger-chat.com) sprang up, devoted to scholarly, whimsical and sometimes heated discussions about what “IT” could or could not be. Scientists and would-be scientists alike even scoured Kamen’s recent patent applications for clues to the mysterious device. Many concluded that Kamen had managed to perfect the Stirling engine, a 19th-century-era perpetual motion device that runs on hydrogen. And most of the speculation, fed by intriguing patent applications filed by Kamen and company in recent years, has suggested that Ginger will be a scooter-type of transportation device, perhaps fueled by a Stirling-like engine. Author Steve Kemper predicted that the invention would “sweep over the world and change lives, cities and ways of thinking.” And Apple founder Steve Jobs reportedly remarked that “if enough people see the machine, you won’t have to convince them to architect cities around it. It’ll just happen.” Kamen reportedly has registered several new domain names recently, including stirlingscooter.com and mystirlingscooter.com, according to amazon.com. And one Ginger-related Web site yesterday was speculating that the new device’s Web address would be “flywheel.com.” Attempts to access that site yesterday were met with a notice that the “page can not be displayed.” Dave Chapman, who works for the Manhattan public Relations firm handling Monday’s unveiling, said materials about “Ginger” would be available shortly thereafter “on the Web site,” but said the Web address most likely would not be announced until Monday. “This is very cloak-and-dagger,” Chapman said, adding that “heads would truly roll,” if anyone spilled the beans before Monday. “I’m playing by the rules.” Woodie Flowers is the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the national adviser to FIRST, the organization Kamen founded 10 years ago to promote science and engineering among youth. He’s known Kamen for a dozen years and said yesterday, “The thing I can say with confidence is that whatever Dean works on is probably a difficult and important problem. “If you look at the whole history of the things he’s done, he tackles problems that other people have struggled with, does them in innovative ways, and in general does a really, really outstanding job,” he added But Flowers said the “leaked hype” surrounding Ginger has at times been “a painful experience” for Kamen. “I think he rolled with the punches, but it was a distraction,” he said. Indeed, through all the speculation, Kamen has remained decidedly tight-lipped — Sphinxlike, even — about “IT” at all public appearances, including at FIRST robotics competitions, which he started in Manchester and developed into an international engineering challenge for high school and college students. At those competitions, he might joke about the excitement surrounding the mystery he had created, but steadfastly refused to do more than tease. Even his mother isn’t talking. Evelyn Kamen, who works at DEKA Research and Development Corp., her son’s engineering firm in the Manchester Millyard, said she would certainly be in the entourage that heads to New York City on Monday. Mrs. Kamen said she was enjoying all the excitement surrounding her famous son. And she said she had been proud of him “from the day he was born — as parents are of all their children.” She also happens to be one of the lucky few who already know the secret of “IT.” So what would happen if she accidentally spilled it to, say, a certain reporter for the state’s largest daily newspapers? “If I told you, I’d have to shoot you,” she said, sounding serious. Just how good a shot is she? “Quite good, as a matter of fact,” she replied. Union Leader correspondent Colin Manning contributed to this report.
Huh. The only kind of "Stirling engine" *I* know already works, doesn't need hydrogen, and isn't a perpetual-motion device. (a high-school chem/physics teacher friend has a small table-top model that runs on a burning candle.) But it wouldn't be the first time I've seen the ill-educated press get it wrong.
But, we'll know for sure on Monday.
There were a few engine related patent aps that looked relevent - but way too many to sift through.
Here's an example of one...
Not sure if the general public can view this...let me know.
I wish I could find my post from last year. I guessed it was a flywheel device. Flywheels can conserve lots of energy - and braking can be accomplished by speeding up the turning wheel - not lossing energy to heat as in cars. Somebody buit a car like that - years ago. It couldn't go around a corner (flywheels are like gyroscopes).
DEVELOPING: 'IT' REVEALED; 'SEGWAY' SELF-BALANCING PEOPLE MOVER
Even more Segway stuff for ya, BK!
This was my favorite line... LOL!
Would that make a car a perpetual motion device that runs on gas?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.