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By Graham Hayday, 7 March 2001 11:55

NEWS Ginger - also known as IT - is the brainchild of Dean Kamen, a 49-year-old scientist who has been busy playing down his work since news of the product first broke and created an apparently unstoppable wave of hype. The bandwagon was set rolling by the publication of a story on industry gossip site inside.com. It claimed that the Harvard Business School Press had paid $250,000 for rights to publish a book about Ginger - even though very few people knew exactly what IT was, including the editor of the book. Kamen remained relatively tight-lipped (although he did claim the environmentally friendly machine will revolutionise our lives), and there have been no detailed official revelations about it. But a patent filed by Kamen at http://www.delphion.com/cgi-bin/viewpat.cmd/WO00075001A1 ) was in keeping with the few scraps of information which had been released. The patent appears to be a blueprint for some sort of scooter, which led many people to ask 'what makes it go?' Inside.com has now struck again, claiming that one of its investigative reporters has uncovered what powers the machine. For the full story you will (of course) have to buy the next issue of the paper version of Inside magazine (or wait until we've seen it and come to silicon.com to read all the best bits). But the publishers have released a few tempting morsels to whet our appetites: - The power behind it is hydrogen - an environmentally friendly fuel (one of the key features of Ginger) - If, as the understated article suggests, Ginger does indeed represent "the first generation of a new mode of transportation that will compete with and possibly replace automobiles", then "the ramifications of a 'hydrogen economy' would be profound on everything from the environment to the energy business to global politics". Their words, not ours. - In subsequent iterations, Kamen apparently intends to "retrofit his scooters with his patented version of the Stirling engine, an almost perpetual motion machine that could be manufactured for any product that requires power" (again, their words. See http://www.fwkc.com/encyclopedia/low/articles/s/s024001104f.html for a bit more on Stirling engines). - Kamen has created a new company called ACROS, whose goal is to create a product line that features "motorized, self-propelled, wheeled personal mobility aids, namely wheel chairs, scooters, carts and chariots". The company has begun building a factory in New Hampshire. The full article will be out later this week - and we'll bring you more on Ginger then (assuming you're not bored by the whole thing by now).