Kamen Touts Segway in the Nation’s Capital
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14–Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman didn’t take a ride. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez, more intrepid, agreed to a lesson. And Rep. Charles Bass (R-NH), an old hand, hopped right on and posed for pictures.
Segway has hit the nation’s Capital.
Manchester resident and inventor Dean Kamen swayed his two-wheeled device around Washington for five days, watching members of Congress and the administration try to navigate the gravity-controlled machine and chiding young people for being unwilling to forego sports for engineering and inventing.
Kamen was in town to drum up support for Segway before Rep. Bass introduces a bill that would classify Segway as a consumer product so that it can be used on sidewalks and in public spaces. Similar state-level legislation will be debated in the New Hampshire House this month.
Because Segway is battery-operated, Kamen touted it to politicians as something that, if used widely, would reduce pollution and help conserve gasoline. Kamen said it could also reduce inner-city congestion.
“I’m just telling everybody, look, we have to make sure this thing has the opportunity to be seen as a serious productivity tool and not a toy, so anybody that’s going to listen I’ll talk to,” he said Thursday between photo opportunities with junior and senior high school students at an event for young inventors at the Commerce Department.
“I think the technology part is done,” he said. “The issue is whether people will allow it to be used in an important way or whether it becomes like Jet Skis and snowmobiles – just fun, recreational toys.”
Wearing a rumpled denim shirt under the golden National Medal of Technology medal that he received in 2000 from President Clinton and that he equates with the Nobel Prize, Kamen said he’ll visit with Beltway politicians as often as possible. “The Postmaster [General] said they want to talk about this. If anyone down here says they’ve been thinking about it and want to see it, I’ll be down here in a heartbeat.” Kamen’s week included visits with leaders at EPA, HUD, the Postal Service, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He also met with a group of more than a dozen congressmen Thursday, brought together by Rep. Bass.
“It was great,” Kamen said, while teetering on his Segway Thursday as the young inventors at the Commerce Department event navigated their own robots around him. “A bunch of the congressmen even took a ride.”
“You’ve got these kids excited all across America,” Commerce Secretary Don Evans shouted to Kamen as he wheeled around the hallways of the building.
The young inventors, who hail from junior and senior high schools in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, gathered to showcase their inventions that they developed as part of an organization called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) that Kamen developed for young inventors. Benji Ambrogi, a mechanical engineer at Manchester-based DEKA, Kamen’s flagship company, joined him as he addressed close to 150 youngsters spilling out of a 100-person capacity room.
Kamen encouraged the youths to pour their hearts and souls into technology instead of sports. “You can develop the muscles hanging on your arms and legs, or you can develop the one hanging between your ear,” he said, reminding the teens that they are the future.
He said he built his invention company on “the idea that we’re going to change the culture of this country.”
Kamen raised some young eyebrows when he said the Segway is not for sale yet, but when he makes “a kindler, simpler version” it will cost close to $3,000.
“On my allowance I could only afford around $140,” said Griffen O’Brien, a 15 year-old inventor from Virginia who says he’d love to snag one. O’Brien and his classmates on a team called Epsilon Delta won a prize at a FIRST competition last year for their robot, Ed, which they displayed for Kamen on Thursday.
O’Brien thinks a lot of his friends would like to buy a Segway, even “the non-geeks.”
“[Kamen] is so excited about what he’s doing it’s infectious,” said Phillip J. Bond, the Commerce undersecretary for technology. “So many industries are excited about it, including the automotive guys. They’d like to have it as something you leave in the back of your car and use it to get around on your own.”
Bond’s role is to help set policy on technology and motivate Americans to use the technology.
“There will be hurdles with legislation” for Segway, he said. “We just also need our legislators to realize how this new technology is coming on so we don’t end up looking in the rear-view mirror.”
Brain Toohey, the vice president of international and regulatory affairs at Segway, said members of the New Hampshire delegation have helped get the word out on Segway. “Believe me, he’s had many meetings this week,” he said of Kamen. “It’s impossible for Dean to take a vacation.”
Rep. Bass said in a statement that in addition to helping ensure that Segway can be used on public ways, he will work to get tax credits for Segway that are enjoyed by buyers and manufacturers of environmentally friendly products with low emissions.
“The manufacturing of Segway in New Hampshire will broaden the tax base and help provide Granite Staters with good high-paying jobs,” Rep. Bass said in a statement on Thursday.
That’s fine for Kamen, who said there was “no chance, no chance” he’ll leave New Hampshire. “It’s perfect – small enough that people have a voice and can get their ideas out,” and have access to government officials, he said. “And big enough that it’s very attractive to engineers and scientists who I want to come work for me.”
Published in The Union Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire
