The greatest inventor you've never heard of

Can you name a great inventor living today? A modern Edison, Washington Carver, Wright etc.? I think the answer unfortunately for most people is no. I can name one, Dean Kamen. Most of you have probably never heard of him but I bet you know one of his inventions. Dick Cheney might know who he is as one of Mr. Kamen's devices is keeping his heart beating today. What do you know? Actual proof that Dick has a heart!

Dean Kamen was born in 1951 in New York. This is just a profile and not a bio so I'll skip to the point after I tell you about a few of his inventions. The portable kidney dialysis machine he invented freed people from the need to be anchored to a hospital for the rest of their lives and he followed up on that with the first insulin pump. He created an all terrain wheelchair that could go on sand, up stairs and even to cocktail parties
This invention spawned the segway which kind of resembled a hand truck but had some of the most advanced technology in the world inside its body. The Segway is what most people know Dean Kamen for today. It and all of the other inventions I mentioned above were designed to make lives easier for people and to make the world a better place.

One of his latest projects is the vapor compression distiller. Doesn't sound all that exciting does it? Well, the guys an engineer, not a poet, but this invention could very well change the very nature of mankinds future. How? Well to start with it has been predicted that this invention could eliminate 50% of the world's diseases by providing safe drinking water that can be made from anything wet. Mud, urine, poisoned water, contaminated ground water, if its liquid, this machine can make safe drinking water from it and do it inexpensively. This thing is so important to our future, Stephen Colbert interviewed Kamen about the project and his goals and barely cracked a single joke. See the interview here.

If my entry made you wonder about the feasibility of mass producing Kamen's invention, check this link out. http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/16/technology/business2_futureboy0216/index.htm


And pictured with this article is El Greengo's dog Kamen, named after Dean Kamen a few years ago when I found him on the streets of Puerto Penasco (the dog, not Dean). He's a very, very good dog.