Inventor of Segway Drinks own uring

Dean Kamen holds 150 patents. He invented the Segway, oversees a national high school robotics competition. Owns his own island, even, in the Long Island Sound.

So it may seem strange and slightly sad that he found himself drinking his own pee last year in South Carolina.

Hold it: Things aren't as bleak as they sound.

To explain -- Kamen sank several million dollars and more than three years of his life into developing a portable water filter that will purify through distillation any type of tainted liquids poured into it. His 200-employee DEKA Research and Development has produced about 30 of the prototypes. About the size of a dorm-room fridge, they use about 2 percent of the energy required by traditional distillation systems.

To prove the technology would work, at a medical and information technology conference held in October 2004, he and organizer Richard Wurman ...

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