How Dean Kamen's Magical Water Machine Could Save the World
John H. Richardson at Esquire - Mr. Richardson and a bunch of others visit Dean Kamen's private island nation, off the coast of Connecticut. Dean Kamen builds cool machines. He's trying to figure out a business plan to get his stirling engine and filter-free water purification machine into third world countries. His water purification system could wipe out water-borne disease.
Here comes Dean Kamen on a Segway, zipping down the hill of his private island like something out of a Bond movie. He floats past his private helicopter. Past his amphibious landing craft. His lighthouse rises up behind him. He's wearing his uniform, the one he wears whether he's tinkering with an engine or visiting the White House: work boots, blue jeans, and a short-sleeved work shirt. He's fifty-seven but still skinny as a ten-year-old, with a lean face and full head of Superman hair. He wears a dead-serious expression as he's perched up there on his electric gizmo, even looks a bit regal, which is sort of appropriate when you consider the rules of his alternate universe--on his tiny private island off the coast of Connecticut, he's not just the man who invented the Segway and the stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBOT and the first portable dialysis machine and a new water filter called the Slingshot that could literally change the world, if he could only get the damn world to cooperate. He's also Lord Dumpling, leader of the Empire of North Dumpling. Dumpie to his friends. He sort of seems serious about this, in a whimsical way, and now Lord Dumpling sweeps right by on his royal scooter, heading down to the landing to greet his guests from America.
