Mrs. Peel,
<<I don't see the market for them yet as "people movers" >>
History is rampant with inventions that folks thought would go nowhere or which were turned into other uses.
Alex Bell was trying to help his deaf parents and even though he was the inventor of the telephone he had no idea, no suspicion even, of the uses it eventually would be put to. He couldn't imagine that people would have enough of anything to say to each other over the telephone to hint of the widespread rapid deployment of what became the Bell System.
Marconi as well didn't suspect that radio waves would be used for "broadcasting" (a term borrowed from agriculture and seed spreading) music. He was only thinking of radio as person to person. Frank Conrad shortly after WWI from his garage in Wilkinsburg, PA began playing music to save his "Testing 1-2-3 Testing 1-2-3" voice while he fiddled with his transmitter. He only recognized the possibilities when his friends and neighbors listening in on their crystal sets every Wednesday and Saturday nights began requesting that he play specific tunes.The nation's first radio station, KDKA-AM, indeed the entire broadcasting industry, evolved from his tinkering and the polite requests of his listeners.
Skiiers were blindsided by snowboarders. The youth of an entire nation has grown up with skateboards, inline skates, foot powered scooters etc. They constitute, IMO, a readymade indigenous peer to peer marketing structure.
<<Americans are fat enough as it is. The last thing we need is a mechanism to eliminate walking on a routine basis.>>
Most fat Americans are declasse, don't walk anyway and won't have the ready cash for a Segway, IMO. It will be the skinnier professional classes and SUV owners with teenage children who have the ready cash that will have to be the first ones on the block to own one.
But, nevertheless, your point is valid and I wonder if Mr. Kamen and his crew actually have conducted a thorough market study.
All in all...time will tell.
Cheers!
Jerry in Omaha |
