Local Company Helps Human Transporter Move
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
By Ryan Smith
The Meadville Tribune
03/07/08- When inventor Dean Kamen and his technical staff first approached C&J Industries about getting involved in a new project, they kept their lips tight about their goal to build the world's first electric, self-balancing human transporter.
In fact, until it was wheeled out onto national television in 2001, all but one of the Meadville-based high-tech injection molding company's top minds had no idea of the exact scope of the company's role in developing Kamen's Segway HT. "The only thing they would tell us was there was this new device," C&J Marketing Manager Mark Fuhrman said recently. "They wouldn't tell us what it was - they just needed a wheel."
That wheel and its assembly, along with the other related parts engineered and built at C&J - such as fenders, housing and platform mats - were developed in a matter of weeks under the watchful eye and quiet mouth of the company's director of engineering, Eric Sharman.
On the set product sampling date, Segway's officials "walked in .. and asked about the part even before they took their coats off," Sharman said. "We met their time targets."
Three generations of Segway HTs later, Kamen was connecting with northwestern Pennsylvania again Thursday as the featured speaker at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania's first Dr. Jeremy D. Brown Millennium Leader Scholarship Luncheon in Erie.
C&J President Dennis Frampton - who also serves as chairman of the Edinboro University Foundation - recently said he and university officials were "very excited" about Kamen's visit, and recalled the inventor telling him early on in their working relationship that "what he wanted inscribed on his tombstone is 'He Advanced the Field of Physics.' " But to do that, an inventor first needs some good help.
"I am a huge supporter of C&J Industries as one of our (parts) suppliers," Kamen told the Tribune in a pre-speech interview Thursday. "In business, it never goes as quickly as you would like. We need to know who we can count on and who will support us, and C&J has always done that for us."
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