On March 21, 2002, it seemed that the mobility of the future had finally found its way. We would have traveled it on two wheels, it was said, but it was not a bike or a motorbike that we were talking about. Not even a scooter. We were all dazzled by a strange object, with two wheels and a platform on which to balance, which a few months earlier its inventor had decided to call Segway.
Twenty years later, there are dozens of articles and essays on the net today that analyze “the rise and fall of Segway”, the rise and fall of an invention that many believed would change the world. The rise, it must be acknowledged, was overwhelming. The credit goes above all to Dean Kamen, the son of an illustrator and a teacher from New York, who has over four hundred patents and at least half a dozen notable inventions to his credit. Among these was iBot, an electric wheelchair that allowed its user to get up. With the same technology, Kamen guessed, it was possible to make a platform with wheels that would move following the movements of the user’s body (for the uninitiated, the Segway starts by tilting the body forward, etc). Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on the project. Initially it was to be called HT, Human Transport; or Ginger, in homage to the actress and dancer Ginger Rogers. But then, on December 1, 2001, Kamen opted for Segway. The company was founded on July 27, 1999: the vision was to develop solutions to move, even on very narrow sidewalks and streets, that were efficient and zero emissions using a technology called “dynamic stabilization”.
On December 3, 2001, a working prototype existed and Kamen organized a spectacular public demonstration. Among other things, he said: “The Segway will be for the car, what the car was for the carriage with horses.” What happened on March 21, 2002? The first Segway model rolled out of the factory and a company birth certificate was signed. A week later the first three models were sold at a charity auction organized by Kamen himself for more than $ 100,000 each.
Success was immediate: thirty-one American states passed a law that allowed Segways to be driven on sidewalks; the postmen of San Francisco went around like that for a while. In California especially it had some success: Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak were photographed on a Segway. Among the few critical voices those of Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. The latter said that every time someone fell while riding the Segway the reputation of the project would suffer. Among the many who fell was US President George W. Bush at his family residence in Maine. In 2010 the tech site Techcrunch wrote: It is quite clear that this is not the future of mobility. At that time, things had already become very complicated: the company had been sold to a British businessman who died the following year while driving a Segway. There were a number of other incidents (one, sensational, between a cameraman on a Segway and Usain Bolt). And in 2015 the company changed hands again. It felt like the end and it was a new but different beginning. In the meantime, in fact, the first electric scooters were appearing: a little more stable, a little less expensive. Some were immediately successful also thanks to a series of technological partnerships with Segway. .