2001

Segway

Dean Kamen (b. 1951), Doug Field (Dates Unavailable)

Every now and again, engineers create something that absolutely amazes people when they first see it. Examples include the first Macintosh computer, the microwave oven, and, of course, the nuclear bomb.

And then there is the case of the Segway, invented by Dean Kamen and engineered by a team of people lead by chief engineer Doug Field. It generated a gigantic amount of speculation and hype before it was released, and before anyone knew what it was. The Segway generated so much hype that, unless it had been something truly spectacular like antigravity boots or a for-real phaser weapon, it could not possibly live up to its prerelease hype.

It is unclear how the hype started and got so much traction. But knowledgeable people (Steve Jobs for example) had secretly seen the Segway (code-named Ginger before release) and made statements about it that were both exciting and vague. “This will be bigger than the Internet,” “More important than the PC,” “It will completely revolutionize cities,” and so on were the kind of things people heard.

Then, when the Segway made its actual debut in 2001, it was a huge letdown. It appeared to be a small electric scooter at an astronomical price. The hype and the reality were incompatible with one another.

But the Segway was and is a remarkably engineered device. It was the first big example of self-balancing technology that most people had seen. Accelerometers and gyros tell a computer when it is getting off-balance and the computer uses the electric motors to rebalance instantly. It has a remarkably simple user interface, where the driver’s lean controls the speed. It also has small but powerful batteries that keep it compact. And its form factor means it can go just about anywhere a person on foot could go—airports, malls, sidewalks, elevators. But even that caused consternation because people were afraid of getting run over.

If nothing else, it shows the importance of publicity when announcing a revolutionary new piece of engineering. There really can be too much of a good thing.

SEE ALSO Elevator (1861), Trinity Nuclear Bomb (1945), ENIAC—The First Digital Computer (1946), Microwave Oven (1946), Lithium Ion Battery (1991).

Tourists riding Segways on July 2, 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark.