You may know him simply as the inventor of the soon-to-be-mass-marketed Segway transporter (a.k.a. "Ginger," a.k.a. "IT"), but Dean Kamen has a history of invention stretching back to his days as a teenager devising mechanical gadgets in his parents' basement. In 1982 Kamen purchased an abandoned textile mill by the banks of New Hampshire's Merrimack River, and he has invested more than $10 million to transform the red brick buildings into the ultimate inventor's playground. His company, Deka Research and Development, now holds more than 200 patents, many of them on innovative health-care devices, such as a portable insulin pump, a compact dialysis machine and a stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBOT. On a recent afternoon, Kamen led Technology Review contributing writer Evan I. Schwartz on a whirlwind tour of the 13,500-square-meter facility, showing off everything from Deka's cavernous machine shop to the nearby Segway spinoff's design and test center, where engineers are fashioning future improvements for the self-balancing, battery-powered transporter. This is where Kamen and 300 employees engage in what they describe as a mysterious and messy process, one in which failure is far more common than success, and no one knows what the final product will look like.

Select from the choices above to read the entire article.