Dean Kamen: Inventor of the Segway and Founder of FIRST
Business Owner · Engineering & Inventions
Dean Kamen earned $60,000 a year building light and sound systems as a teenager, invented the Segway and the iBOT, holds over 1,000 patents and co-founded the robotics non-profit FIRST.
About Dean Kamen: Inventor of the Segway and Founder of FIRST
Dean Lawrence Kamen (born April 5, 1951, on Long Island, New York) is an American engineer, inventor and businessman, known for inventing the Segway and the iBOT and for founding the non-profit organization FIRST with Woodie Flowers. He holds over 1,000 patents. Kamen was born to Jack Kamen, an illustrator for Mad, Weird Science and other EC Comics publications, and Evelyn Kamen, in a Jewish family. As a teenager he was already being paid for his ideas: local bands and museums paid him to build light and sound systems, and his annual earnings reached $60,000 before high school graduation. He attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute but dropped out in 1976 before graduating, after five years of private advanced research on the insulin pump AutoSyringe. He is best known for inventing the product that eventually became the Segway PT, an electric, self-balancing human transporter with a computer-controlled gyroscopic stabilization and control system, balanced on two parallel wheels and controlled by moving body weight. Sources: English Wikipedia (Dean Kamen, accessed September 2026).
Basic Information
Inventor of the Segway; founder, FIRST; founder, DEKA Research
Company Details
DEKA Research & Development / FIRST
Engineering, Medical Devices, STEM Education
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