Dean Kamen

Inventor

• Born: April 5, 1951
• Place of Birth: Rockville Centre, New York

AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR

Kamen is best known for developing the Segway PT (personal transporter), a self-balancing, electric-powered pedestrian scooter. One of the most accomplished inventors ever, he found initial success with several medical devices and eventually filed more than one thousand patents in the United States and abroad. He also started the nonprofit organization FIRST, dedicated to youth education in technology.

PRIMARY FIELDS: Electronics and electrical engineering; mechanical engineering; medicine and medical technology

PRIMARY INVENTIONS: Segway PT; iBOT; AutoSyringe; "Luke Arm" prosthetic; HomeChoice dialysis machine; Slingshot water purifier

Early Life

Dean Kamen was born in Rockville Centre, New York, on April 5, 1951, to Jack Kamen, an illustrator for Weird Science and Mad magazine, and Evelyn Kamen, a high school teacher. As he later recounted, he was interested in gadgetry from an early age. By the time he was five years old, he was devising his first gadget: one that allowed him to make his bed without having to move repeatedly from side to side to do so.

However, the young Kamen was not so interested in school, especially as he struggled with dyslexia. By the time he was in junior high, he found rote learning distasteful, was averse to traditional conventions of education (and being told what to do), and decided that test-taking was little more than the errand of a fool. He challenged many of his mathematics and physics teachers, heckled others, and opted for reading on his own—such works as Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687)—rather than doing homework.

Through junior high and high school Kamen was only an average student, but at home the teen was prodigious. Working with transistorized electronics, he designed, built, and redesigned audiovisual control systems, and at sixteen he began landing contracts to install his works at the Four Seasons Hotel, the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, and the Museum of the City of New York. The teenager was also commissioned to automate the New York Times Square ball to drop on New Year’s Eve. Though still in high school, Kamen was taking home earnings that nearly matched those of his mother and father combined: $60,000 a year.

Life’s Work

Though he preferred working on inventing, Kamen did finish high school and in the early 1970s went on to study at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts. At the same time Kamen was attending WPI, his brother Barton was studying medicine at Harvard. There, Barton discerned the problem of patients who in their need for continuous, twenty-four-hour treatment had to visit the hospital for their medications. Kamen worked on the problem until he came up with the answer: a portable drug infusion pump patients could wear that administered set doses of medication and that freed the people from having to go to the hospital every time they needed a treatment.

By 1976 Kamen had dropped out of his five-year college studies at WPI and founded his first company, AutoSyringe, after the same name as his infusion pump. AutoSyringe was housed at its birthplace, Kamen’s parents’ home. There, when the basement got too crowded for production, Kamen took it upon himself to send his parents on a cruise, commission an architect, and hire a crew to raise the house on stilts and expand the basement to accommodate manufacturing and sales. Two years later, Kamen demonstrated his first infusion pump to an applauding medical and scientific community. In 1982, the reputed maverick inventor sold the company and product rights for $30 million.

That same year, Kamen founded DEKA Research and Development, to offer inventor-for-hire services. He set up shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, where Kamen moved in 1988. The company would eventually employ nearly two hundred engineers, technicians, and machinists. In 1989, he founded FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization that sponsors robotics competitions for young people and encourages them to enter careers in science and technology. In 1993, Kamen invented HomeChoice, a portable kidney dialysis machine. In 1995, he invented iBOT, a revolutionary robotic mobility system designed with three pairs of wheels, sensors, gyroscopes, and servomotors that give the "wheelchair" a balance mode function that allows it to raise, as if on its back haunches, enabling the user to virtually stand and climb curbs and stairs. In his eight-year, $50-million designing process for iBOT, Kamen later said that he focused on the nuances of mobility, on restoring not only accessibility but also dignity to disabled people. When the first conventional wheelchair users tried the iBOT, Kamen reported, they were in tears.

Yet what made Kamen both famous and infamous was his invention introduced in December 2001. Ten years in the making and costing millions of his own money, the Segway came to the attention of the public by way of national television and other media, which built up the mysterious forthcoming product as a world-changing piece of equipment. The self-balancing, electric-powered personal transporter (PT) device that was finally unveiled was futuristic and innovative but a disappointment to those expecting something truly revolutionary. The product itself was not a failure, as it worked as advertised, but the hype surrounding the device before its release made out the Segway to be much more than it actually was: a two-wheeled personal scooter powered by computer-controlled electric motors and unique in its self-balancing and other capabilities.

Undaunted by the backlash against the Segway, Kamen continued to invent devices that do indeed liberate, accommodate, empower, and even save lives. DEKA was commissioned by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to devise such apparatuses as a "controllable launcher," which could launch an urban fighter from the ground through an arc in the air and onto a building rooftop in 1.2 seconds; PowerSwim fins, which give a combat diver underwater speeds of up to two knots; and the Luke Arm (named for the Star Wars character Luke Skywalker), a lightweight, brain-controlled prosthetic arm, which, with its fourteen sensors, enables the user to sense and distinguish temperature and pressure without looking. The Luke Arm was heralded as a major improvement in prosthetics technology, allowing finer motor control than ever before. By 2014 the arm was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and DEKA began exploring options for mass production, aiming to keep costs low, especially for disabled veterans.

Kamen also pursued innovation in technologies aimed at improving the standard of living for disadvantaged populations. Most notably, he worked on a project to provide developing countries with clean energy and water. In 2003, Kamen and DEKA produced the Slingshot, a nonpolluting, low-power, relatively cheap water purification system. It was designed to be easily installed and work on a Stirling engine, a technology with roots in the nineteenth-century that can be efficiently paired with environmentally friendly, renewable sources of energy. Unfortunately, Kamen had difficulty finding a commercial manufacturer for the Slingshot. Eventually a partnership with the Coca-Cola Company was established, and by 2014 plans were in place to hold trials of the devices in Paraguay and Ghana. A documentary film about Kamen's life, SlingShot, was released in 2014, focusing on his efforts building toward a solution to the clean water problem.

The upbeat inventor earned many awards for his innovation and influential efforts. After such accolades as the Kilby Award (1994) and the Hoover Medal (1995), Kamen was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997. He was presented with the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy, and Employment in 1998 and the National Medal of Technology in 2000, for his biomedical inventions that have advanced worldwide medical care and for engaging America in the excitement of science and technology. For his invention of the Segway and the infusion pump for diabetics, Kamen was granted the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002. His Slingshot project was runner-up in Time magazine’s "Coolest Invention of 2003." For his invention of the AutoSyringe, Kamen was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005. He was honored with the United Nations’ Global Humanitarian Action Award in 2006, and in 2007 he was listed as one of fifty outstanding leaders on the Scientific American 50 annual list of key contributors in science and technology. Kamen was awarded honorary doctorates from various universities, including Kettering University, in 2001, and Plymouth State University, in 2008.

In 2010 Kamen hosted the television series Dean of Invention on the Planet Green Network, providing insight into new and emerging technological developments. Aimed at young audiences, the show promoted science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as critically important yet also enjoyable and accessible pursuits.

In the late 2010s Kamen turned his attention to the development of artificial biological tissue, including human organs, for medical purposes. To support such research he founded the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) in 2017, which then began the BioFabUSA innovation program with US Department of Defense Funding. Kamen also saw media attention in 2020 when it was announced that production of the Segway PT would be ended. In May 2024, Kamen announced that he and his team would be exhibiting medical breakthroughs from his ARMI program, his FIRST program, and his DEKA Research & Development Corporation at the 2024 DIA Global Annual Meeting.

Impact

Kamen affected the world with his avant-garde vision of technology as a powerful force for social good. His medical inventions—including the AutoSyringe and the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine—profoundly changed the lives of those who used the devices. The iBOT improved the lives of many wheelchair-bound persons, allowing them to go up and down stairs, step onto and off curbs, and navigate rough terrain, performing actions that perhaps they had never done before. Even the much-mocked Segway proved useful in assisting not only police officers and security guards but also people with mobility problems. Kamen also emphasized reaching out to engage young minds in science and technology with his FIRST program, while his Slingshot water-purifying system showed the potential to provide clean water at little cost to people in developing countries. His inventions have changed the way people live and even their quality of life.

Bibliography

"Dean Kamen." FIRST. FIRST, 2020, www.firstinspires.org/about/leadership/dean-kamen. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

Gimein, Mark. “Reinventing the Wheel, Slowly: Segway Hasn’t Transformed City Life, but Its Technology May Yet Become Pervasive.” BusinessWeek 11 Sept. 2006: 56. Print.

Kemper, Steve. Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen’s Quest to Invent a New World. Cambridge: Harvard Business School P, 2003. Print.

Miller, Riley. “Segs4Vets Making Mobility Accessible.” The Exceptional Parent 38.5 (2008): 96–97. Print.

Moriarty, Erin. "Welcome to Dean Kamen's Cool World." CBS News. CBS Interactive, 11 Jan. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"Renowned Inventor Dean Kamen to Exhibit Medical Breakthroughs at DIA 2024 Global Annual Meeting." DIA, 6 May 2024, www.diaglobal.org/en/resources/press-releases/2024/05-06-dean-kamen-to-exhibit-medical-breakthroughs. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

Stone, Brad. “’Stuff That Will Take Your Breath Away’: The Father of Inventions, Dean Kamen.” Newsweek 4 Dec. 2006: 46. Print.

Wilczynski, Vince, Stephanie Slezycki, and Dean Kamen. FIRST Robots: Aim High—Behind the Design. Gloucester: Rockport, 2007. Print.