Slashdot Mirror
Inside Dean Kamen's Seceded Island of Geekery
mattnyc99 writes "The new issue of Esquire has a long, in-depth, intricate profile of Dean Kamen and his quest to invent a better world. Earlier this month, we discussed Kamen's Sterling-electric car, but this piece goes into much more detail about how that engine works — he got the original idea from the upmodded Henry Ford artifact in the basement of his insane island lab — and about how his inventions often go overlooked, including the Slingshot water purifier that Stephen Colbert made famous but that no one has actually bought yet. Quoting: 'To get the Slingshot to the 20 percent of the world that doesn't have electricity, Kamen came up with the idea of splitting it in half. Leaving the Stirling aside, he would try to develop a market for his distiller in parts of the developing world that have electricity but not reliable clean water. "There are five hundred thousand little stores in Mexico," he says. "If we can put one of these in 10 percent of them, that's enough to put it in production." That may be the killer app for the distiller.' So, is this guy all hype with overpriced devices, or is time for someone to take his genius (Segway aside) to the mass market?"
has he managed to solve the pickle matrix in his hamburger earmuffs yet?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It has weird new formatting...post my last post in big text at the top of the screen? That can't be good for work usage...
I cannot find a way to change it back to the simple mode of just a few minutes ago....anyone?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or is he, as the title implies but the summary fails to make clear, a guy who has made tons of money selling stuff he's invented since the 80s, and has made enough money that he bought his own private island (with its own "navy" and "air force")and then half-jokingly seceded from the United States something like 20 years ago.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
C'mon folks, if you're gonna pretend to be geeks, at least get it right - it's Stirling technology, not Sterling.
There are a lot of great R&D guys out there who have no idea how to get their product into the consumer's hands. Kamen started out making medical equipment (portable dialysis IIRC), and the Segway is the little brother of one of the best mobility devices (wheelchairs) in existence. But his track record is horrible when it comes to mass market devices. OTOH, you have the iPod, which is a very functional and stylish, yet underperforming, piece of technology, and the sell like mad. If he wants to turn the trend around he needs to spend some of that mountain of cash on a top shelf PR and Marketing firm, as opposed to the stunt publicity that "announced" the Segway.
Next time you need kidney dialysis you won't need to question his genius.
And kudos to him for seceding from the union!
Actually, the best new water purification device comes from Seldon Technology. It uses carbon nanotubes and doesn't need electricity.
If you can get these devices distributed throughout Mexico you can crush their feeble electricity distribution infrastructure.
Plan, through, think cunning.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
...including the Slingshot water purifer that Stephen Colbert made famous but that no one has actually bought yet
Unfortunately philanthropy won't ever take off unless it's profitable. Just an inherit part of human greed. Sad but true. We have MORE than enough food to feed the entire human population, yet people still starve to death.
Case in point. For those of you who have seen Charlie Wilson's war, they end up giving millions of dollars in arms money to Afghanistan to repel the Russian invasion then when they ask for a million dollars to help rebuild the schools a US politician says, "Charlie, no one gives a shit about the schools."
Agh
If you want to get clean water from non-clean water, there are plenty of systems available. Here's a small watermaker that runs on salt water. It's a reverse osmosis device, with the prefilters needed to get rid of the solid crud. Here's a simpler one for non-salt water. The U.S. military uses reverse osmosis units heavily. They work fine. They scale down to straw-sized things for survival use, and scale up to city-sized desalinization plants.
So why is Kamen's system better? Lower power consumption? Lower initial cost? Fewer consumables? The article doesn't tell us that. It's not like he's the first person to build a packaged water purifier.
Is there a copy of this article on a site that doesn't immediately flag problems at work--something tech oriented perhaps?
Inside Dean Kamen's Seceded Island of Greekery
There, fixed it for you.
My understanding of Sterling-cycle engines is that the greater the delta in temperature between the heat source and the heat sink, the greater the efficiency. Mobile applications have only air for a heat sink, and thus are non-ideal. Where Sterling-cycle makes since is in a stationary generator, preferably on the coast, where you can pump up cold water from the depths to get your greatest heat differential. The ideal location would be the Hawaiian islands, with geothermal heat and deep ocean in close proximity. Obviously Dean Kamen has put more research into this than I have, but I really don't see this as a practical means of powering a car. As far a the Segway, at $5000 it is 10 times the price point at which it would catch on. Also, any rational mechanical engineer would simply have added a third wheel to the Segway to balance it, rather than relying on the sensors and computationally expensive methods the Segway uses.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What I'd love to see Kamen work on would be some kind of mass-market home water purification system for use here in the US, simply because that way he'd be able to make a profitable killing. There are so few companies that manufacture equipment out there now, that they would not be difficult at all to supplant with a better product.
US Filter, Culligan, etc, are all designed to support an infrastructure of independent distributors and not really intended for personal maintenance. The technology in these things is seriously old-school in most cases, while the science behind them is fairly simple.
Radon removal - simple as hell. Just push air in and out of water to clear it. I've seen it lowered just by putting a valve on the water lines for low levels. Or by using carbon filters. Water softening - simple as hell, but requires filtering media cleaning which goes through bag after bag of salt, which then goes into groundwater or sewage systems. Iron removal - again, simple but requires filter media. pH balancing - simple, but requires chemicals.
If Dean can come up with ways to do those items without the grossly excessive media requirements they have these days, he'll really be on to something to revolutionize an industry.
I lived in Manchester working for my brother's water company for a few years, I may not know all the details, but I know that it's an industry based on some really simple principles that could benefit from some serious technological leaps beyond "Hey, the timer that says to use 10 pounds of salt to clean a water softener is now digital instead of an analog timer!"
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Speaking as someone who has met Dean and worked with him on more than a few FIRST competitions, he's someone who is truly geek and lives to discover and improve things. That skill set isn't necessarily the same skills that would serve marketing and promotions people, and once Dean is set into motion he's a hard cat to stop - something you definitely want in an R&D genius.
At some point, Dean needs to do the market research before the announcement phase but if you spend even a few minutes with the guy, you can see how excited and dedicated he is to wanting to change the world in positive ways. I imagine that when you see the world in that framework, it becomes hard to contain your excitement to the meeting rooms....
Still, for one of the smartest and richest guys I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, he's extremely down to earth. Rare breed.
As another former FIRST member, I agree 100%.
Guy give the most *depressing* speeches, though.
And his lifelong quest to solve the Longitude problem. Being a genius isn't enough, you need superhuman tenacity.
for those that want to know more about how things operate "behind the scenes" at DEKA, check out CODE NAME: GINGER
absolutely fascinating look at DEKA from an insider during the development of the Segway.
I like microcars
I've been involved with FIRST since '98, and actually work for FIRST now, and think that the GP post sums things up nicely...eccentric might be another fitting word to describe Dean...Yes, there may have been better ways to do some things(like the segway), but I'm guessing the whole discussion went something like this..."OK, we just got the balancing to work(with the iBOT wheelchair), now what can we use this in that's FUN?"
I think mattnyc99 (the poster) misses one of his own points by saying "Segway aside."
mattnyc99 points out that Kamen is trying to leverage the distiller side of the market to help fund / drive down costs to get the Stirling side of the product to market.
The technology in the Segway comes originally from a wheelchair system that Kamen and company designed and produced. The Segway was an effort to popularize the technology to drive down costs, so that the wheelchair would be much less expensive, and widely available.
At least, that's the way I see it.
People who camp often use hand-pumped versions of this to make creek water drinkable. The advantage is that you can use the muscles in your arm to pump the water instead of sucking on a straw until your face implodes.
Please, don't take this personally. I know you're just making a post on Slashdot. But why can't you even read one article about this before you make useless guesses?
After two minutes of Googling, I found this diamond in the rough, a patent application secretively titled "STIRLING ENGINE THERMAL SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS", submitted by Dean Kamen. Though you may dislike the Segway, and I can't blame you for it, the technology came from his iBot wheel chair, which is the closest thing I've seen to offering someone who doesn't have use of their legs a chance at full mobility. This has improved the lives of thousands of people. Unless you're an aid worker or another genius inventor, your comparable contributions to society are far less, without even touching his more traditional medical inventions.
So, with all due respect, before you pat yourself on the back for shooting down an idea you are totally ignorant of, stop typing and read about the idea first. Then, if you have something useful to say, the world will be glad to read about your idea, and then reply.
so this guy can design $26,000 wheelchairs that no one can afford. $12,000 electric mopeds that no one buys.
Call me not impressed.
And now he has some water filtration system, cost unknown, but probably pricey.
And a Stirling engine of unknown efficiency and reliability.
If you read between the lines of TFA you might get the impression that investors are not clamoring to invest in another expensive set of gadgets that are over-designed and over-priced and under-powered.
Carnegie at his best:
Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.
So, a rich man knows what to do with your money, but you do not. That's individualism and freedom according to Carnegie, and not coincidentally, everyone who is sitting at the top of the caste instead of the bottom.
Well, you can stick that kind of freedom up your ass, for all I care. If the wealth belongs to the community, let the community decide how to spend it. What Carnegie describes is tyranny exerted by corporate power instead of state power, which is better in some ways, but still not good.
he is lord dumpling.
im involved with FIRST, one of his best projects to date and he is a great guy, he is nice, funny, and all around a good guy.
I read a quote somewhere. I think it might have been Lee Iacoca. Anyway, it advised that it takes three people to change the world.
1. A Genius, able to see the world in fantastic new ways, a quality which negates the ability to function within or understand the workings of mundane society.
2. A Banker, skilled in making the factories and marketing work, but who as a result cannot be anything more than incrementally innovative.
3. A Communicator, who is too grounded to be a Genius, and too loose to be a Banker, but lives just enough in both those worlds to connect the halves together and complete the equation.
It sounds like Dean stumbled into his own source of money, but could still use a conservative mover and shaker to bring his ideas to fruition more effectively.
-FL
For low incomes I thought the best was actually sticking water in discarded plastic bottles and slinging them onto the roof to cook out the nasties with free and plentiful sunlight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Vmmo47ucU
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
And yet, I've not seen his engine for sale.
And where can one buy his 'slingshot'? Again, talk - and no objects for sale.
I get excited just reading about what he's working on. He's like a living work of fiction. What an inspiration!
this piece goes into much more detail about how that engine works -- he got the original idea from the upmodded Henry Ford artifact in the basement of his insane island lab
Actually,
* The article reveals precious little about how Kamen's Stirling engine works. If he has truly come up with a workable design, I would love to hear a few details about how he overcame the glitches that previous experimenters had with the Stirling engine (such as leaky seals being unable to contain the working gas).
* Ford's steamboat engine is in Kamen's New Hampshire mansion, not on his Connecticut island, and nowhere does the article say that Ford's engine inspired Kamen to improve the Stirling engine.
Bad summary.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.