This is Ginger, and it's the future. Not at all like the Sinclair C5

The waiting is over. After months of feverish speculation that raised expectations in Silicon Valley to the point of panting, wild-eyed hysteria, an award-winning American inventor yesterday unveiled a device which, it is claimed, will revolutionise urban transportation and design, reduce the west's overdependence on Middle East oil and have a more profound impact on humankind than the development of the personal computer. It's a scooter.

Looking more like a Dyson vacuum cleaner or an old-fashioned rotary lawnmower than Jetsonian travel technology made real, the two-wheeled, electric-powered device is capable of carrying a single standing rider at speeds of up to 17mph, has no brakes and can run for six hours on a few pence worth of electricity.

The Segway Human Transporter's most impressive innovation - and the apparent justification for all the hype - is its ability to "understand" where the rider wants to go and take them there just by the way they shift their weight.

Using a sophisticated gyroscopic balancing mechanism, tilt sensors hidden in the chassis monitor the rider's centre of gravity more than 100 times a second, telling the wheels and motor which way to turn and which speed to go. To move off, the rider leans forward, and the gyroscopes make it extremely difficult to fall off.

Provoking immediate and sniggering comparisons with Sir Clive Sinclair's much-ridiculed C5, the Segway was revealed for the first time yesterday by its inventor, Dean Kamen, who has made millions of dollars by inventing medical devices, including the world's first portable insulin pump and a wheelchair capable of going upstairs.

Since it emerged in January that Mr Kamen was working on a new project, the technology world has been buzzing with speculation over what it might be. Some of the more fanciful predictions included an anti-gravity hoverboard or a teleportation pod.

Overblown claims



Months of selectively drip-fed rumours and bold claims from some of the most celebrated technology luminaries fuelled the gossip, making Project Ginger the most hyped product since the launch of the Apple MacIntosh.

Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder, predicted that in future cities would be designed around the device, while Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, also backed the project publicly and financially.

Mr Kamen is believed to have raised about $90m (£63m) to develop the scooter and put it into production at a new factory in New Hampshire. The Harvard Business School Press reportedly signed a $250,000 contract with Mr Kamen for the book about Mr Segway's development without even knowing what it was.

But yesterday, he appeared to recognise that the end product may not have justified the relentlessly overblown claims made of it.

"It won't beam you up to Mars or turn lead into gold," he told Time magazine in an interview published yesterday to coincide with the launch. "So sue me."

However, the inventor again took the opportunity to up the hyperbole ante. Using the scooter, he said, was like slipping on a pair of "magic sneakers".

"All the knowledge that went into knowing how to walk goes into this machine," he continued. "It kind of walks for you."

The US postal service, the national park service and the city of Atlanta seem convinced and are already planning to begin field tests next year.

But among those who have followed Ginger's development most closely, the response was distinctly muted. Although most technology devotees knew Ginger was a scooter, many had expected it at least to have a revolutionary power source, running on a highly efficient Stirling engine, perhaps, or using hydrogen propulsion. A rechargeable battery is not the same. There are also doubts about the practicalities. The consumer version of the Segway will cost about $3,000, ruling it out for all but the most gadget-obsessed or wealthy, and making it extremely attractive to thieves. At 65lb, lugging it upstairs out of harm's way is unlikely to be a desirable option.

Cities built around it



On the dozens of internet chat rooms and message boards that have been crackling with often fanciful speculation about what IT might be, the mood was of massive disappointment tinged with an element of disbelief

At patentcafe.com, which hosts one of the biggest Ginger message boards, one posting, titled "more thoughts on this ridiculous toy" from a user called jjaesi summed up the feeling of anti-climax. "It's a niche item, doomed to a limited, short-term market by the 3k price tag and the need to recoup $100m in development ... Cities built around it? Please..."

Technology experts were in no mood to disagree. On the Register, the leading British technology news website, the Washington correspondent Thomas C Greene dismissed the scooter as good news only for dogs, which would chase them relentlessly. "For the rest of us, it's an amusing novelty, possibly a fad, but we don't quite see, as Steve Jobs reportedly did, cities being designed around it."

British inventors, who had been keenly anticipating the unveiling of Ginger, were also distinctly underwhelmed.

"It is just another Sinclair C5," said Paul Ambridge, chairman of the Institute of Patentees and Inventors. "The reality does not match the expectation."

Even battle-hardened public relations experts believe that the pre-launch hysteria over Ginger may have gone too far.

Mark Borkowski, whose major clients include Vodafone and Warner Bros, said: "The point a lot of people are missing is that he raised an enormous amount of venture capital on the back of all this. He got the value out of it before he launched the product.

"But I'm afraid that hyping something is fine; if it doesn't meet expectations then the whole world will turn against you and I think that is exactly what is going to happen to this guy."

Some of the other great inventions that were going to change the way we live our lives ... but failed miserably

Clive Sinclair's C5

The benchmark for failed and over-hyped inventions, a battery powered hybrid between a car and a bicycle. Sinclair said he would sell at least 100,000. He sold 7,000, losing £8m in the process.

The iSmell machine

Sadly for Proctor & Gamble and Digiscents, the Californian company that devised the iSmell, consumers didn't want to smell crisps over the internet or sniff alien blood in computer games via a device that emitted scents with the aid of 128 chemicals and a fan.

The HOTOL space plane

The rocket powered Horizontal Take Off and Landing (HOTOL) space plane offered the long-distance commuter the dream of getting to Australia in less than an hour by blasting into orbit. We weren't, however, happy to fund a plane whose every flight would have cost £2.5m.

Adam Vaughan