1
00:00:15,370 --> 00:00:27,450
Speaker 1: Pushkin. One Sunday morning in September Seawan Christie was walking

2
00:00:27,490 --> 00:00:29,530
Speaker 1: his dog along a footpath by the side of the

3
00:00:29,610 --> 00:00:34,210
Speaker 1: river wharf in Yorkshire, England. The path wound upwards as

4
00:00:34,250 --> 00:00:38,050
Speaker 1: the bank rose sharply away from the river. Looking up,

5
00:00:38,370 --> 00:00:40,970
Speaker 1: mister Christie saw another man on the path at the

6
00:00:40,970 --> 00:00:44,370
Speaker 1: top of the hill about to come down. The path

7
00:00:44,810 --> 00:00:47,650
Speaker 1: wasn't really wide enough for both of them. This happens

8
00:00:47,650 --> 00:00:50,610
Speaker 1: all the time on walks in the English countryside. One

9
00:00:50,650 --> 00:00:53,290
Speaker 1: walker finds a place to move aside to let the

10
00:00:53,330 --> 00:00:56,570
Speaker 1: other pass. There'll be a smile and a greeting, maybe

11
00:00:56,570 --> 00:00:58,930
Speaker 1: a word about the weather. But the man at the

12
00:00:58,970 --> 00:01:03,170
Speaker 1: top of the hill wasn't walking. He was on a segway,

13
00:01:03,650 --> 00:01:07,730
Speaker 1: you know, that two wheeled, chunky electric scooter type device

14
00:01:07,770 --> 00:01:11,890
Speaker 1: that you'd sometimes see being ridden by sightseeing tourists and cities,

15
00:01:12,370 --> 00:01:15,690
Speaker 1: or security guards in shopping malls, Not so often on

16
00:01:15,810 --> 00:01:20,090
Speaker 1: country walks. Mister Christie later described seeing the figure on

17
00:01:20,130 --> 00:01:23,810
Speaker 1: the segue back up slightly off the path, inviting the

18
00:01:23,850 --> 00:01:27,250
Speaker 1: dog walker to continue up past him. The man wobbled

19
00:01:27,690 --> 00:01:31,490
Speaker 1: then disappeared from view. Mister Christie went to look over

20
00:01:31,530 --> 00:01:36,210
Speaker 1: the edge down the steep drop at the bottom. Forty

21
00:01:36,210 --> 00:01:40,850
Speaker 1: feet below was a segue and the man not moving,

22
00:01:41,490 --> 00:01:46,250
Speaker 1: faced down in the river. Mister Christie called the emergency services,

23
00:01:46,370 --> 00:01:49,850
Speaker 1: but there was nothing they could do. The man had died.

24
00:01:50,210 --> 00:01:55,010
Speaker 1: The postmortem found of multiple blunt force injuries to the

25
00:01:55,130 --> 00:02:00,490
Speaker 1: chest and spine. The body of the segue owner was identified.

26
00:02:01,330 --> 00:02:04,850
Speaker 1: It turned out he didn't just own a segue, he

27
00:02:05,010 --> 00:02:10,690
Speaker 1: owned the company. The story made headlines and you could

28
00:02:10,690 --> 00:02:15,130
Speaker 1: almost hear the guilty chuckles being suppressed in newsrooms around

29
00:02:15,130 --> 00:02:21,090
Speaker 1: the world. Owner of segue dies on segue. Segue maker

30
00:02:21,250 --> 00:02:25,770
Speaker 1: is killed on one segue, boss dies riding one off cliff.

31
00:02:27,010 --> 00:02:30,650
Speaker 1: You can't openly poke fun at the accidental death of

32
00:02:30,690 --> 00:02:33,770
Speaker 1: a sixty two year old man while being courteous to

33
00:02:33,810 --> 00:02:38,490
Speaker 1: a dog walker. Still, segus were kind of a joke.

34
00:02:39,090 --> 00:02:43,730
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush famously tumbled off one at Kenny Bunkport.

35
00:02:44,570 --> 00:02:48,490
Speaker 1: Their dorky, uncool image had recently been reinforced by the

36
00:02:48,570 --> 00:02:53,490
Speaker 1: comedy movie Paul Blart Mall Coop, in which Kevin James

37
00:02:53,530 --> 00:02:57,170
Speaker 1: plays an out of shape segue riding security guard with

38
00:02:57,210 --> 00:03:02,370
Speaker 1: delusions of grandeur that the boss of segue had ridden

39
00:03:02,410 --> 00:03:05,690
Speaker 1: as see off a cliff was well, the kind of

40
00:03:05,690 --> 00:03:10,050
Speaker 1: new story that made you suppress a guilty chuckle. But

41
00:03:10,170 --> 00:03:14,290
Speaker 1: that wasn't the real story here. It wasn't the real

42
00:03:14,370 --> 00:03:20,930
Speaker 1: story at all. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to

43
00:03:21,090 --> 00:03:54,690
Speaker 1: cautionary tales. This is a cautionary tale of two inventions.

44
00:03:55,210 --> 00:03:58,890
Speaker 1: One was simple and boring, we'll hear about that later,

45
00:03:59,570 --> 00:04:04,730
Speaker 1: and one was fiendishly clever and massively hyped. That hype

46
00:04:04,770 --> 00:04:08,370
Speaker 1: started with a much shared news article in January two

47
00:04:08,410 --> 00:04:12,010
Speaker 1: thousand and one on about a mysterious leak from the

48
00:04:12,050 --> 00:04:18,530
Speaker 1: world of publishing. What is it? Book proposal heightens intrigue

49
00:04:18,530 --> 00:04:22,690
Speaker 1: about secret invention touted us bigger than the Internet or PC.

50
00:04:23,650 --> 00:04:26,290
Speaker 1: The story was about a book proposal that had been

51
00:04:26,330 --> 00:04:31,570
Speaker 1: offered to publishers in strictest confidence. Harvard Business School Press

52
00:04:31,650 --> 00:04:34,290
Speaker 1: had bought the rights to the book for a quarter

53
00:04:34,490 --> 00:04:38,330
Speaker 1: of a million dollars. The book was about an invention

54
00:04:38,730 --> 00:04:42,530
Speaker 1: currently being worked on, not yet revealed to the world,

55
00:04:43,490 --> 00:04:48,130
Speaker 1: and the invention that was the mystery the book proposal

56
00:04:48,330 --> 00:04:53,210
Speaker 1: didn't say. Harvard Business School Press had bought the book

57
00:04:53,570 --> 00:04:57,810
Speaker 1: without knowing what the invention was. The literary agent who

58
00:04:57,810 --> 00:05:01,210
Speaker 1: had sold it to them didn't know the books author knew,

59
00:05:01,770 --> 00:05:05,410
Speaker 1: but he couldn't tell. He'd signed a non disclosure agreement

60
00:05:05,450 --> 00:05:10,010
Speaker 1: with the inventor, a man called Dean Cayman. Cayman had

61
00:05:10,050 --> 00:05:14,170
Speaker 1: made his fortune in medical devices, had developed the world's

62
00:05:14,210 --> 00:05:19,810
Speaker 1: first drug infusion pump, portable insulin pump, and portable dialysis machine.

63
00:05:20,810 --> 00:05:26,090
Speaker 1: Now he was making something else, something so important he

64
00:05:26,090 --> 00:05:30,250
Speaker 1: had invited a writer to document for posterity the process

65
00:05:30,290 --> 00:05:35,610
Speaker 1: of making it. The book proposal called the Invention simply it.

66
00:05:37,010 --> 00:05:40,690
Speaker 1: The book's author, Steve Kemper, wrote in that proposal that

67
00:05:41,090 --> 00:05:46,130
Speaker 1: it would profoundly affect the way people live. It will

68
00:05:46,530 --> 00:05:50,450
Speaker 1: sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways

69
00:05:50,450 --> 00:05:55,330
Speaker 1: of thinking. But don't just take Kemper's word for it.

70
00:05:55,890 --> 00:05:59,210
Speaker 1: In the proposal, Kemper describes how he saw various tech

71
00:05:59,330 --> 00:06:03,570
Speaker 1: titans and investors respond to seeing it after Dean Cayman

72
00:06:03,610 --> 00:06:07,890
Speaker 1: had sworn them too to secrecy. Jeff Bezos let out

73
00:06:08,130 --> 00:06:12,690
Speaker 1: a loud, honking laugh and told Cayman, it's a product

74
00:06:12,810 --> 00:06:17,930
Speaker 1: so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. Steve Jobs said,

75
00:06:18,490 --> 00:06:21,690
Speaker 1: if enough people see the machine, you won't have to

76
00:06:21,730 --> 00:06:26,050
Speaker 1: convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen.

77
00:06:27,210 --> 00:06:30,810
Speaker 1: One venture capitalist said he had never expected to see

78
00:06:31,090 --> 00:06:35,690
Speaker 1: anything as important as the Worldwide Web until he saw it.

79
00:06:36,730 --> 00:06:40,450
Speaker 1: Another investor predicted it would make more money in its

80
00:06:40,490 --> 00:06:44,810
Speaker 1: first year than any startup ever, and in five years,

81
00:06:45,130 --> 00:06:50,490
Speaker 1: Dean Cayman would be worth more than Bill Gates. But

82
00:06:50,770 --> 00:06:56,130
Speaker 1: what was it, you know, dear listener, exactly what it is?

83
00:06:56,210 --> 00:07:00,090
Speaker 1: Of course, it's a segue, And so did anyone in

84
00:07:00,130 --> 00:07:04,570
Speaker 1: two thousand and one who was paying attention. Online sleuths

85
00:07:04,650 --> 00:07:08,130
Speaker 1: dug out all the patents Dean Cayman had recently filed

86
00:07:09,370 --> 00:07:14,490
Speaker 1: featured drawings of scooter type devices. One journalist correctly joined,

87
00:07:14,570 --> 00:07:16,850
Speaker 1: some of the dots you can tell by the way

88
00:07:16,890 --> 00:07:20,810
Speaker 1: the patents connect that Cayman is combining technologies to produce

89
00:07:20,850 --> 00:07:24,930
Speaker 1: a scooter that mimics the way humans maintain balance. When

90
00:07:24,930 --> 00:07:27,810
Speaker 1: you stand on the scooter holding that big t bar,

91
00:07:28,210 --> 00:07:30,490
Speaker 1: if you lean a little bit, it moves with you.

92
00:07:31,330 --> 00:07:36,210
Speaker 1: So far, so spot on. But this couldn't just be

93
00:07:36,250 --> 00:07:39,490
Speaker 1: a scooter, could it. There had to be something special

94
00:07:39,530 --> 00:07:43,930
Speaker 1: about it. Add up some more clues and you'll come

95
00:07:43,970 --> 00:07:48,650
Speaker 1: to the inescapable conclusion that it's a scooter using an

96
00:07:48,690 --> 00:07:57,090
Speaker 1: alternative power source hydrogen others disagreed. It's an antique gravity hoverboard. No,

97
00:07:57,610 --> 00:08:03,730
Speaker 1: it's a teleportation pod, a magnetic levitation device, or maybe

98
00:08:03,850 --> 00:08:12,490
Speaker 1: it is actually an acronym it for inductions transportation inertial thruster.

99
00:08:13,450 --> 00:08:18,610
Speaker 1: Speculation ran wild. It became the fourth most searched for

100
00:08:18,810 --> 00:08:23,290
Speaker 1: topic on lycos dot com if you remember lycos dot com,

101
00:08:23,650 --> 00:08:29,010
Speaker 1: just behind Napster and Britney Spears. The animated sitcom South

102
00:08:29,090 --> 00:08:33,050
Speaker 1: Park based an episode around it, imagining it as a

103
00:08:33,090 --> 00:08:36,970
Speaker 1: cross between a personal transportation device and a sex toy.

104
00:08:39,490 --> 00:08:43,170
Speaker 1: In December two thousand and one, after nearly a year

105
00:08:43,290 --> 00:08:47,970
Speaker 1: of hype and jokes and increasingly wild guesses, the time

106
00:08:48,090 --> 00:08:52,970
Speaker 1: has finally come for it to be revealed live on

107
00:08:53,170 --> 00:08:58,330
Speaker 1: Good Morning America. Dean Cayman wears jeans and a blue workshirt.

108
00:08:58,930 --> 00:09:02,850
Speaker 1: He stands awkwardly next to a white curtain flanked by

109
00:09:02,850 --> 00:09:07,410
Speaker 1: the show's hosts, Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer. All right,

110
00:09:07,570 --> 00:09:10,770
Speaker 1: are we ready? Are you ready? I'm ready? Okay, I

111
00:09:10,810 --> 00:09:16,010
Speaker 1: think it's time. The curtain rises to reveal a segue.

112
00:09:16,930 --> 00:09:20,170
Speaker 1: The deck to stand on two big wheels either side,

113
00:09:20,730 --> 00:09:24,130
Speaker 1: the waist height handlebars rising up on a central pillar.

114
00:09:25,570 --> 00:09:29,410
Speaker 1: All Right, there it is. Now, what does it do?

115
00:09:31,130 --> 00:09:36,770
Speaker 1: This is the world's first self balancing human transporter. Came

116
00:09:36,850 --> 00:09:41,730
Speaker 1: and explains, you think forward, you go forward, you think backward,

117
00:09:42,250 --> 00:09:49,410
Speaker 1: you go backward. Diane Sawyer seems distinctly unimpressed. I'm tempted

118
00:09:49,450 --> 00:09:54,010
Speaker 1: to say that's it, but that can't be it. But

119
00:09:54,130 --> 00:09:58,690
Speaker 1: it was. This was it the very same invention that

120
00:09:58,730 --> 00:10:03,530
Speaker 1: had had Jeff Bezos honking with laughter, Steve Jobs sure

121
00:10:03,610 --> 00:10:08,530
Speaker 1: that cities would re architect around it, and various investors

122
00:10:08,770 --> 00:10:12,090
Speaker 1: for over themselves to pour money into it, convinced that

123
00:10:12,130 --> 00:10:14,570
Speaker 1: it was going to make a fortune and change the world.

124
00:10:15,690 --> 00:10:19,250
Speaker 1: Looking at it there in the studio, it was hard

125
00:10:19,290 --> 00:10:22,290
Speaker 1: to see what they'd all been thinking. But then the

126
00:10:22,370 --> 00:10:25,610
Speaker 1: presenters and Cayman left the studio and went down to

127
00:10:25,690 --> 00:10:29,530
Speaker 1: Bryant Park to try the segue out. Neither of the

128
00:10:29,570 --> 00:10:33,130
Speaker 1: presenters had been on one before. Diane Sawyer looked a

129
00:10:33,170 --> 00:10:37,130
Speaker 1: little hesitant, but in a matter of seconds, Charles Gibson

130
00:10:37,250 --> 00:10:40,210
Speaker 1: was giggling like a child. And all you do is

131
00:10:40,250 --> 00:10:42,330
Speaker 1: just as he said, You think forward a little bit,

132
00:10:42,330 --> 00:10:44,650
Speaker 1: and off you go. I mean you do. And then

133
00:10:44,650 --> 00:10:46,410
Speaker 1: you want to turn to the right, I mean you

134
00:10:46,530 --> 00:10:50,650
Speaker 1: just turn to the right Gibson's verdict, it's really cool.

135
00:10:51,930 --> 00:10:55,410
Speaker 1: The author Steve Kemper said he'd seen this many times

136
00:10:55,450 --> 00:10:59,170
Speaker 1: while Shadowing came and to write his book. Skeptics turned

137
00:10:59,170 --> 00:11:01,610
Speaker 1: into believers as soon as they took one of the

138
00:11:01,650 --> 00:11:05,530
Speaker 1: devices for a spin. I've never been on a segue,

139
00:11:05,650 --> 00:11:08,850
Speaker 1: so I can only go by how others describe it,

140
00:11:09,850 --> 00:11:12,730
Speaker 1: like the writer John Heilman, who did a cover story

141
00:11:12,770 --> 00:11:16,370
Speaker 1: for Time magazine just after the launch. No matter which

142
00:11:16,410 --> 00:11:19,490
Speaker 1: way I lean or how hard it refuses to let

143
00:11:19,490 --> 00:11:22,810
Speaker 1: me fall over, the machine is sensing and reacting to

144
00:11:22,930 --> 00:11:30,210
Speaker 1: subtle shifts in my balance. I am slack jawed. So

145
00:11:30,570 --> 00:11:33,170
Speaker 1: while it was true that much of the media coverage

146
00:11:33,250 --> 00:11:37,290
Speaker 1: saw the Segu's launch as a letdown eagerly awaited revolutionary

147
00:11:37,370 --> 00:11:41,450
Speaker 1: urban transport device turns out to be a scooter, there

148
00:11:41,530 --> 00:11:45,250
Speaker 1: was also still scope to believe that if only people

149
00:11:45,410 --> 00:11:49,530
Speaker 1: just gave one a go, they'd want one. But I've

150
00:11:49,530 --> 00:11:53,130
Speaker 1: promised you a tale of two inventions, a clever and

151
00:11:53,210 --> 00:11:57,130
Speaker 1: complex one, the Segue, and a simple and boring one.

152
00:11:57,930 --> 00:12:01,890
Speaker 1: It's time to meet that other invention after the break.

153
00:12:20,850 --> 00:12:25,170
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hesseleden was born in nineteen forty eight in the

154
00:12:25,170 --> 00:12:28,330
Speaker 1: English city of Leeds. He grew up on the Holton

155
00:12:28,450 --> 00:12:32,330
Speaker 1: Moor public housing estate, a place where money was scarce

156
00:12:32,850 --> 00:12:37,130
Speaker 1: and prospects were grim. Here's a writer who escaped the estate,

157
00:12:37,410 --> 00:12:40,810
Speaker 1: describing life in his family's house that around the time

158
00:12:40,970 --> 00:12:45,490
Speaker 1: Jimmy was born. A soot encrusted kettle simmering on the

159
00:12:45,530 --> 00:12:49,730
Speaker 1: hob flat irons resting in the hearth, earthenware, milk cooler,

160
00:12:50,170 --> 00:12:53,770
Speaker 1: chimney rods, loaf tins in the oven, bread cakes the

161
00:12:53,810 --> 00:12:58,650
Speaker 1: size of hubcaps, cooling on the windowsill. Like most young

162
00:12:58,690 --> 00:13:01,890
Speaker 1: men who grew up on the estate, Jimmy left school

163
00:13:01,930 --> 00:13:05,570
Speaker 1: as soon as he could at age fifteen. He worked

164
00:13:05,690 --> 00:13:09,610
Speaker 1: first as a laborer, then a coal miner. In the

165
00:13:09,690 --> 00:13:14,730
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, the British coal mining industry collapsed. Jimmy, now

166
00:13:14,770 --> 00:13:17,570
Speaker 1: in his mid thirties, was one of many who lost

167
00:13:17,570 --> 00:13:21,330
Speaker 1: his job, but he did get redundancy money and he

168
00:13:21,450 --> 00:13:28,170
Speaker 1: used it to start a business in sand blasting. Jimmy

169
00:13:28,290 --> 00:13:31,170
Speaker 1: holidayed with his family at a caravan park on the

170
00:13:31,210 --> 00:13:35,490
Speaker 1: northeast coast of England. Year by year, the caravans were

171
00:13:35,490 --> 00:13:39,970
Speaker 1: getting perilously closer to the sea. This stretch of coastline

172
00:13:40,050 --> 00:13:43,970
Speaker 1: was eroding more quickly than any in Europe. Every year

173
00:13:44,250 --> 00:13:48,330
Speaker 1: a couple more yards of land slipped away. Houses built

174
00:13:48,330 --> 00:13:52,210
Speaker 1: a safe looking distance inland were now being abandoned as

175
00:13:52,250 --> 00:13:56,730
Speaker 1: the cliff edge crept ever nearer, until finally the land

176
00:13:56,770 --> 00:14:04,530
Speaker 1: beneath them crumbled into the waves. One way to try

177
00:14:04,570 --> 00:14:08,930
Speaker 1: to shore up eroding coastlines is with gabions, an idea

178
00:14:08,970 --> 00:14:13,850
Speaker 1: that stretches back to ancient Rome. Gabions are cages made

179
00:14:13,890 --> 00:14:17,490
Speaker 1: once with wicker and now with wire mesh, and typically

180
00:14:17,570 --> 00:14:20,370
Speaker 1: filled with rocks. You can stack them up to build

181
00:14:20,450 --> 00:14:24,130
Speaker 1: retaining walls. Jimmy came up with an idea for a

182
00:14:24,170 --> 00:14:29,690
Speaker 1: better gabion, a flat pack wire mesh cage, easy to transport,

183
00:14:30,010 --> 00:14:33,730
Speaker 1: unfold and erect with a heavy duty liner, so you

184
00:14:33,770 --> 00:14:35,810
Speaker 1: can fill it up with whatever you have to hand,

185
00:14:36,450 --> 00:14:41,610
Speaker 1: not just rocks, but gravel, sand or mud. It expands

186
00:14:41,690 --> 00:14:46,170
Speaker 1: like a concertina to form a container. Jimmy called his

187
00:14:46,210 --> 00:14:50,890
Speaker 1: brainchild the Concertainer, and in nineteen eighty nine he took

188
00:14:50,890 --> 00:14:54,570
Speaker 1: out a patent and set up a company called Hesco.

189
00:14:55,690 --> 00:14:58,330
Speaker 1: He made his first sale to a water company that

190
00:14:58,530 --> 00:15:01,290
Speaker 1: wanted to shore up the collapsing walls of a canal.

191
00:15:01,850 --> 00:15:05,410
Speaker 1: A promising start Jimmy thought it might make a nice

192
00:15:05,410 --> 00:15:10,530
Speaker 1: little sideline to his sand blasting business. The concertainer is

193
00:15:10,570 --> 00:15:14,090
Speaker 1: a simple idea. As soon as you see one being used,

194
00:15:14,610 --> 00:15:18,890
Speaker 1: you get it. The segue could hardly be more different.

195
00:15:19,810 --> 00:15:23,330
Speaker 1: When Time Magazine's writer got off after his first ride,

196
00:15:23,650 --> 00:15:27,810
Speaker 1: slack jawed with amazement, he asked Dean Cayman to explain

197
00:15:27,890 --> 00:15:33,050
Speaker 1: how it worked. Cayman's reply, he wrote, involved a blizzard

198
00:15:33,170 --> 00:15:37,050
Speaker 1: of equations. Dean Cayman first got the idea that would

199
00:15:37,090 --> 00:15:39,530
Speaker 1: become the segue when he watched a man in a

200
00:15:39,530 --> 00:15:42,690
Speaker 1: wheelchair struggled to get over a step into an ice

201
00:15:42,730 --> 00:15:47,050
Speaker 1: cream shop. He wondered, could he make a wheelchair that

202
00:15:47,090 --> 00:15:50,770
Speaker 1: would climb upstairs. It seemed to Cayman that you'd want

203
00:15:50,810 --> 00:15:53,730
Speaker 1: a device that could regain stability when it was knocked

204
00:15:53,770 --> 00:15:57,530
Speaker 1: off balance. Cayman got some engineers at his medical device

205
00:15:57,570 --> 00:16:00,370
Speaker 1: company to rig up a basic prototype with off the

206
00:16:00,410 --> 00:16:06,850
Speaker 1: shelf paths, gyroscopes, batteries, motors from a printer. It looked

207
00:16:06,890 --> 00:16:09,370
Speaker 1: more like a little table on wheels than a wheelchair,

208
00:16:09,450 --> 00:16:11,890
Speaker 1: but it would do for now to prove the concept.

209
00:16:12,890 --> 00:16:17,450
Speaker 1: Shove it and it righted itself. Pretty cool, But put

210
00:16:17,450 --> 00:16:22,250
Speaker 1: it on stairs, and it kept falling over. Eventually, the

211
00:16:22,250 --> 00:16:25,650
Speaker 1: team realized that they'd been thinking about the problem all wrong.

212
00:16:26,570 --> 00:16:30,810
Speaker 1: When humans climb stairs, when we walk, it's not that

213
00:16:30,850 --> 00:16:35,450
Speaker 1: we're constantly losing stability then regaining it. We're a little

214
00:16:35,490 --> 00:16:39,370
Speaker 1: bit unstable all the time, but we're constantly making little

215
00:16:39,370 --> 00:16:43,610
Speaker 1: adjustments to keep that instability under control so we don't

216
00:16:43,690 --> 00:16:47,090
Speaker 1: end up flat on our faces. Taking a step is

217
00:16:47,130 --> 00:16:52,450
Speaker 1: like a controlled fall. Walking is one controlled fall after another.

218
00:16:55,570 --> 00:16:59,890
Speaker 1: Armed with that conceptual insight, Cayman's fast growing team of

219
00:16:59,930 --> 00:17:04,290
Speaker 1: engineers set about mimicking the human ability to stay upright

220
00:17:04,490 --> 00:17:08,450
Speaker 1: while moving. As Cayman puts it, they made a device

221
00:17:08,490 --> 00:17:11,890
Speaker 1: with a gyroscope that acts like your inner ear, a

222
00:17:11,970 --> 00:17:15,370
Speaker 1: computer that acts like your brain, motors that act like

223
00:17:15,410 --> 00:17:20,010
Speaker 1: your muscles, wheels that act like your feet. The sensors

224
00:17:20,090 --> 00:17:23,770
Speaker 1: and software, and the table like prototypes became more and

225
00:17:23,930 --> 00:17:28,930
Speaker 1: more sophisticated. Cayman remember had set out to make a wheelchair.

226
00:17:29,570 --> 00:17:32,890
Speaker 1: But then one day an engineer stood on one of

227
00:17:32,930 --> 00:17:36,610
Speaker 1: those prototypes for a laugh. As he shifted his balance,

228
00:17:36,890 --> 00:17:40,690
Speaker 1: the table moved on its wheels. Soon the engineer was

229
00:17:40,810 --> 00:17:47,930
Speaker 1: surfing around the lab. It was great fun, but Cayman

230
00:17:48,010 --> 00:17:51,610
Speaker 1: didn't just see fun. He saw a product that would

231
00:17:51,650 --> 00:17:57,450
Speaker 1: revolutionize how people got about. When Cayman invented medical devices,

232
00:17:57,850 --> 00:18:01,450
Speaker 1: he made his money by selling the rights and collecting royalties.

233
00:18:02,410 --> 00:18:06,130
Speaker 1: But with this product, he'd do it differently. He wanted

234
00:18:06,170 --> 00:18:10,250
Speaker 1: to make it and market it himself. He created a company.

235
00:18:10,450 --> 00:18:14,530
Speaker 1: Within his company, he forbade his engineers from talking about

236
00:18:14,570 --> 00:18:18,810
Speaker 1: their work. He approached a journalist, Steve Kemper, because he

237
00:18:18,890 --> 00:18:23,090
Speaker 1: thought the genesis of a world changing idea ought to

238
00:18:23,090 --> 00:18:27,250
Speaker 1: be recorded. Steve Kemper's book would eventually be published with

239
00:18:27,330 --> 00:18:32,410
Speaker 1: the title Reinventing the Wheel, and Dean Cayman wasn't happy

240
00:18:32,450 --> 00:18:35,610
Speaker 1: with it. The way Kemper tells the story, the product

241
00:18:35,690 --> 00:18:38,210
Speaker 1: seemed to be taking a long time to get to market,

242
00:18:38,610 --> 00:18:43,170
Speaker 1: despite millions of dollars and years of research. The engineers

243
00:18:43,170 --> 00:18:46,090
Speaker 1: were still surfing around the lab on their prototypes and

244
00:18:46,210 --> 00:18:50,010
Speaker 1: occasionally crashing into wolves. When they crashed hard enough to

245
00:18:50,130 --> 00:18:53,810
Speaker 1: dent the wall, they'd sign and date the dent. Kemper

246
00:18:53,890 --> 00:18:56,610
Speaker 1: signed a dent he made. He thought he saw the

247
00:18:56,690 --> 00:19:00,450
Speaker 1: root of the problem in the wider company culture. Things

248
00:19:00,490 --> 00:19:03,530
Speaker 1: couldn't just be good, They had to be great, even

249
00:19:03,530 --> 00:19:06,810
Speaker 1: if That meant constantly going back to the drawing board.

250
00:19:07,650 --> 00:19:09,890
Speaker 1: Dean or one of his engineers would come up with

251
00:19:09,930 --> 00:19:12,650
Speaker 1: a great new idea that yanked the product in a

252
00:19:12,730 --> 00:19:18,530
Speaker 1: fresh direction. Parts and designs and specs constantly mutated. Dean

253
00:19:18,770 --> 00:19:23,050
Speaker 1: issued dire warnings about deadlines, but didn't stop making suggestions

254
00:19:23,050 --> 00:19:28,650
Speaker 1: for improvements. But making things great costs money, and Cayman's

255
00:19:28,690 --> 00:19:32,890
Speaker 1: money was fast running out. He had no choice but

256
00:19:32,970 --> 00:19:39,370
Speaker 1: to show his product to potential investors. Remember the meetings.

257
00:19:39,410 --> 00:19:43,210
Speaker 1: Steve Kemper described the venture capitalist who thought the Segue

258
00:19:43,250 --> 00:19:46,730
Speaker 1: would be as important as the Worldwide Web, and Steve Jobs,

259
00:19:47,170 --> 00:19:50,810
Speaker 1: after thirty seconds surfing around, Jobs said, this is the

260
00:19:50,890 --> 00:19:56,490
Speaker 1: most amazing piece of technology. Since the PC investors practically

261
00:19:56,610 --> 00:20:00,050
Speaker 1: fought to give Cayman their money, they valued the company

262
00:20:00,090 --> 00:20:04,370
Speaker 1: at half a billion dollars. True, some things might still

263
00:20:04,410 --> 00:20:09,570
Speaker 1: go wrong. Jeff Bezos worried about regulators. You have a

264
00:20:09,570 --> 00:20:13,290
Speaker 1: product so revolutionary you'll have no problem selling it. The

265
00:20:13,370 --> 00:20:16,570
Speaker 1: question is are people going to be allowed to use it?

266
00:20:18,370 --> 00:20:21,730
Speaker 1: The lead software engineer worried about making the product as

267
00:20:21,770 --> 00:20:25,330
Speaker 1: safe as possible, though there was only so much he

268
00:20:25,370 --> 00:20:29,450
Speaker 1: could do. In a sadly prescient turn of phrase he

269
00:20:29,570 --> 00:20:33,450
Speaker 1: told Steve Kemper, somebody will probably go over a cliff

270
00:20:33,490 --> 00:20:38,970
Speaker 1: on one. Dean Cayman himself was mainly worried that some

271
00:20:39,250 --> 00:20:42,050
Speaker 1: bigger company would get wind of his product, figure out

272
00:20:42,050 --> 00:20:45,770
Speaker 1: the technology behind it, and beat him to market. The

273
00:20:45,890 --> 00:20:48,530
Speaker 1: technology is so good that the risk is not that

274
00:20:48,570 --> 00:20:51,370
Speaker 1: it won't be everywhere in ten years, but that it

275
00:20:51,490 --> 00:20:54,930
Speaker 1: might not be us providing it. It'll be Honda or Sony.

276
00:20:55,450 --> 00:20:59,650
Speaker 1: The only advantage we have is that they're clueless. To

277
00:20:59,770 --> 00:21:04,250
Speaker 1: make sure Honda and Sony remained clueless, Cayman was paranoid

278
00:21:04,290 --> 00:21:08,970
Speaker 1: about secrecy. Every potential investor who saw a prototype set

279
00:21:09,610 --> 00:21:13,530
Speaker 1: had to sign a non disclosure agreement. When his company

280
00:21:13,570 --> 00:21:17,610
Speaker 1: recruited new engineers, the applicants weren't allowed to see what

281
00:21:17,770 --> 00:21:22,210
Speaker 1: they'd be working on. Job ads were cryptic. We're looking

282
00:21:22,250 --> 00:21:26,530
Speaker 1: for talented, passionate, and unique individuals to design and develop

283
00:21:26,610 --> 00:21:31,010
Speaker 1: this revolutionary electro mechanical product that will create a new industry.

284
00:21:31,530 --> 00:21:34,370
Speaker 1: This is the product you will tell your grandchildren about.

285
00:21:36,290 --> 00:21:40,850
Speaker 1: Cayman's quest for secrecy also hobbled his marketing team. They

286
00:21:40,850 --> 00:21:45,530
Speaker 1: couldn't do basic consumer research. Cayman did think about his

287
00:21:45,650 --> 00:21:49,330
Speaker 1: marketing strategy he heard that Steven Spielberg was about to

288
00:21:49,370 --> 00:21:54,490
Speaker 1: film a futuristic sci fi movie with Tom Cruise Minority Report.

289
00:21:55,170 --> 00:21:59,410
Speaker 1: He tried to persuade Spielberg to put the characters on segus,

290
00:22:00,010 --> 00:22:03,090
Speaker 1: But when his marketers wanted to show some ordinary people

291
00:22:03,090 --> 00:22:05,810
Speaker 1: a segue and ask would you buy one? How much

292
00:22:05,810 --> 00:22:10,290
Speaker 1: would you pay? Cayman was dismissive. Who would worry about

293
00:22:10,330 --> 00:22:15,890
Speaker 1: stuff like that? Cautionary tales will return after the break.

294
00:22:29,410 --> 00:22:33,370
Speaker 1: When Britain's Ministry of Defense saw Jimmy Hesseledon's new type

295
00:22:33,370 --> 00:22:38,170
Speaker 1: of collapsible gabbion, the Concertainer, they realized straight away that

296
00:22:38,250 --> 00:22:42,730
Speaker 1: it had uses far beyond shoring up canal walls. They

297
00:22:42,770 --> 00:22:45,210
Speaker 1: could use them in war zones, they thought as a

298
00:22:45,290 --> 00:22:49,890
Speaker 1: quick way to build protective barriers around aircraft, machinery and people.

299
00:22:50,650 --> 00:22:54,250
Speaker 1: They placed a big order with Jimmy's company, Hesco, and

300
00:22:54,370 --> 00:22:57,810
Speaker 1: took the Concertainers to the First Gulf War in nineteen

301
00:22:57,930 --> 00:23:03,090
Speaker 1: ninety one. They worked brilliantly. The traditional way for armies

302
00:23:03,170 --> 00:23:07,410
Speaker 1: to build protective barriers is with sandbags, but filling up

303
00:23:07,450 --> 00:23:12,570
Speaker 1: sandbags is time consumer and exhausting. Constructing a typical wall

304
00:23:12,610 --> 00:23:16,450
Speaker 1: of sandbags might take ten soldiers most of a day

305
00:23:16,570 --> 00:23:19,650
Speaker 1: to make the same size wall out of Jimmy's concertainers

306
00:23:19,810 --> 00:23:23,770
Speaker 1: took twenty minutes for two soldiers and a digger. Soon

307
00:23:24,010 --> 00:23:28,130
Speaker 1: the US military had embraced Jimmy's product too. It became

308
00:23:28,170 --> 00:23:32,490
Speaker 1: better known as the Hesco bastion. Saved the lives of

309
00:23:32,570 --> 00:23:37,010
Speaker 1: soldiers like Sergeant David McGregor from Texas, who was caught

310
00:23:37,090 --> 00:23:39,650
Speaker 1: up in a mortar attack in Iraq in two thousand

311
00:23:39,690 --> 00:23:43,970
Speaker 1: and four. If that basket had not been there, then

312
00:23:44,010 --> 00:23:48,210
Speaker 1: I would have been killed instantly. In July two thousand

313
00:23:48,290 --> 00:23:53,090
Speaker 1: and eight, in Afghanistan, India's diplomatic staff received a tip

314
00:23:53,130 --> 00:23:57,050
Speaker 1: off from American intelligence that the Taliban planned to attack

315
00:23:57,090 --> 00:24:01,330
Speaker 1: their embassy in Kabul. They quickly threw up a defensive

316
00:24:01,370 --> 00:24:05,490
Speaker 1: line of sand filled Hesco bastions around the compound walls.

317
00:24:06,410 --> 00:24:10,490
Speaker 1: A few days later, a suicide bob rammed the car

318
00:24:10,730 --> 00:24:15,290
Speaker 1: packed with explosives into a diplomatic vehicle outside the ambassy gates.

319
00:24:16,610 --> 00:24:20,490
Speaker 1: The embassy was on a busy street. The explosion killed

320
00:24:20,690 --> 00:24:25,690
Speaker 1: fifty eight people, but the embassy itself was largely unscathed

321
00:24:26,090 --> 00:24:30,650
Speaker 1: as the sand filled containers absorbed the blast. A senior

322
00:24:30,690 --> 00:24:35,770
Speaker 1: official later expressed no doubt the Hesco barriers saved the

323
00:24:35,850 --> 00:24:42,090
Speaker 1: lives of all those in the compound. When Jimmy dreamed

324
00:24:42,170 --> 00:24:46,130
Speaker 1: up his idea, it thought of shoring up coastlines against erosion,

325
00:24:46,650 --> 00:24:50,010
Speaker 1: and it turned out that the Hesco bastion did indeed

326
00:24:50,050 --> 00:24:53,690
Speaker 1: work pretty well for that, and for building other kinds

327
00:24:53,690 --> 00:24:59,250
Speaker 1: of retaining wall, such as for garden landscaping, also containing

328
00:24:59,290 --> 00:25:04,890
Speaker 1: fuel spills and creating barriers against sediments to help wetlands regenerate,

329
00:25:05,610 --> 00:25:09,970
Speaker 1: and making walls for temporary housing after nat full disasters

330
00:25:10,770 --> 00:25:14,970
Speaker 1: and flood defense. In two thousand and five, as Hurricane

331
00:25:15,050 --> 00:25:19,690
Speaker 1: Katrina bore down on New Orleans, workers raced to plug

332
00:25:19,730 --> 00:25:22,930
Speaker 1: gaps in the city's levees. They built a wall of

333
00:25:23,050 --> 00:25:29,130
Speaker 1: Pesco bastions along the Seventeenth Street Canal. It survived the storm,

334
00:25:29,210 --> 00:25:34,370
Speaker 1: a nearby concrete wall did not, as it sat in

335
00:25:34,410 --> 00:25:37,770
Speaker 1: the caravan park by the seaside. Jimmy had thought his

336
00:25:37,850 --> 00:25:40,690
Speaker 1: idea of a flat pack gabbion might make him a

337
00:25:40,690 --> 00:25:43,770
Speaker 1: bit of income as a sideline to his sand lasting business.

338
00:25:44,650 --> 00:25:47,850
Speaker 1: Two decades on, he featured in a newspapers list of

339
00:25:47,890 --> 00:25:52,850
Speaker 1: the four hundred wealthiest people in Britain. Jimmy's fortune was

340
00:25:53,010 --> 00:25:57,930
Speaker 1: estimated at two hundred million pounds three hundred million dollars.

341
00:26:00,450 --> 00:26:04,130
Speaker 1: As Dean Cayman prepared to launch the Segue, his team

342
00:26:04,250 --> 00:26:09,090
Speaker 1: met with investors and advisors. The author Steve Kemper described

343
00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:13,490
Speaker 1: someone posing a question to the company's marketing director, what's

344
00:26:13,570 --> 00:26:17,850
Speaker 1: the product's value proposition? You know, like, why would anybody

345
00:26:17,890 --> 00:26:22,250
Speaker 1: want to use it? The marketing director seemed stumped, perhaps

346
00:26:22,290 --> 00:26:25,370
Speaker 1: not surprisingly given that he hadn't been allowed to test

347
00:26:25,410 --> 00:26:30,450
Speaker 1: the product with actual consumers. Cayman waived the question away.

348
00:26:31,130 --> 00:26:33,970
Speaker 1: We need to remember that what big ideas do is

349
00:26:34,050 --> 00:26:38,130
Speaker 1: make new ways to see things. Steve Jobs chimed in

350
00:26:38,210 --> 00:26:41,810
Speaker 1: to agree, that's the story of the PC. Nobody had

351
00:26:41,890 --> 00:26:44,890
Speaker 1: any idea how they'd be used, and look what happened.

352
00:26:46,250 --> 00:26:50,090
Speaker 1: They're right, Big ideas do make new ways to see things.

353
00:26:50,770 --> 00:26:53,770
Speaker 1: It's the story of the PC. It's the story of

354
00:26:53,890 --> 00:26:58,210
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hesseldon's concertainer too. Other people looked at this product

355
00:26:58,250 --> 00:27:01,530
Speaker 1: to stop erosion and saw a new way to fight floods,

356
00:27:01,850 --> 00:27:06,770
Speaker 1: regenerate wetlands, and protect soldiers. But it's not the story

357
00:27:06,810 --> 00:27:10,530
Speaker 1: of the Segue. When people looked at THEE they shrugged

358
00:27:11,250 --> 00:27:15,490
Speaker 1: or laughed. Not everyone, of course, some people loved it

359
00:27:16,210 --> 00:27:20,050
Speaker 1: until they heard the price. Dean Cayman had burned through

360
00:27:20,170 --> 00:27:23,050
Speaker 1: so much money to make the Segue great. He had

361
00:27:23,090 --> 00:27:27,690
Speaker 1: to charge nearly five thousand dollars for the entry level version,

362
00:27:28,330 --> 00:27:31,770
Speaker 1: over eight thousand in today's money. It was too much

363
00:27:31,850 --> 00:27:37,890
Speaker 1: for many. Cayman had imagined Tom Cruise riding a segue

364
00:27:38,050 --> 00:27:42,690
Speaker 1: in Minority Report, but when screenwriters saw the segue, they

365
00:27:42,690 --> 00:27:46,130
Speaker 1: gave them to characters who were comically unaware of how

366
00:27:46,170 --> 00:27:50,690
Speaker 1: silly they looked. Niles Crane in Frasier Job, Bluth in

367
00:27:50,890 --> 00:27:56,330
Speaker 1: Arrested Development, The Mall Cop Paul Blart. Twenty years on,

368
00:27:56,970 --> 00:28:01,450
Speaker 1: Segus aren't made anymore after some changes in ownership. The

369
00:28:01,530 --> 00:28:06,050
Speaker 1: Segue brand now sits with a Chinese company called nine Bot.

370
00:28:06,770 --> 00:28:10,050
Speaker 1: They make electric scooters that have the word see on them,

371
00:28:10,210 --> 00:28:13,690
Speaker 1: but they're just regular electric scooters, the kind that a

372
00:28:13,850 --> 00:28:16,930
Speaker 1: dimer dozen in cities these days where you have to

373
00:28:16,970 --> 00:28:23,570
Speaker 1: do the balancing yourself. What's to blame for the Seguy's failure?

374
00:28:24,690 --> 00:28:29,170
Speaker 1: Dan Coys was Steve Kemper's literary agent, and he wonders

375
00:28:29,170 --> 00:28:33,850
Speaker 1: if the answer is him. He recalls how he wasn't

376
00:28:33,890 --> 00:28:37,690
Speaker 1: quite careful enough with Kemper's mysterious proposal for a book

377
00:28:37,730 --> 00:28:42,450
Speaker 1: about it. The proposal was supposed to stay confidential, but

378
00:28:42,610 --> 00:28:46,090
Speaker 1: he shared it too widely, it got leaked, and after

379
00:28:46,130 --> 00:28:50,450
Speaker 1: all the hype about anti gravity or teleportation devices, the

380
00:28:50,530 --> 00:28:54,530
Speaker 1: reveal of the self balancing scooter couldn't help but invite

381
00:28:54,570 --> 00:28:58,970
Speaker 1: the question is that it. Writing in Slate, Dan Coy's

382
00:28:59,090 --> 00:29:02,770
Speaker 1: argues that often with new products, the audience doesn't quite

383
00:29:02,850 --> 00:29:06,090
Speaker 1: understand them immediately. It takes a while for their value

384
00:29:06,090 --> 00:29:10,090
Speaker 1: proposition to emerge. But the Segue could ever quite recover

385
00:29:10,530 --> 00:29:14,370
Speaker 1: from the letdown of its launch. He wrote, I can't

386
00:29:14,410 --> 00:29:17,410
Speaker 1: stop thinking that the Segue might still have had a

387
00:29:17,530 --> 00:29:23,690
Speaker 1: chance but for the hype. Maybe, But maybe the answer

388
00:29:23,770 --> 00:29:27,490
Speaker 1: is simpler. Most of us don't really mind doing our

389
00:29:27,530 --> 00:29:31,450
Speaker 1: own balancing. We don't need a machine with gyroscopes that

390
00:29:31,530 --> 00:29:34,770
Speaker 1: mimic the inner ear and motors that act like muscles.

391
00:29:35,410 --> 00:29:38,010
Speaker 1: Were happy enough to use our own muscles and inner ears.

392
00:29:39,010 --> 00:29:43,610
Speaker 1: The Segue was a brilliantly clever, exquisitely engineered solution to

393
00:29:43,730 --> 00:29:47,810
Speaker 1: something most people never saw as a problem. The concertainer

394
00:29:48,210 --> 00:29:54,090
Speaker 1: solved problems that Jimmy Hesselven hadn't even thought about before

395
00:29:54,210 --> 00:29:58,410
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales. I wrote another podcast series called Fifty Things

396
00:29:58,490 --> 00:30:02,010
Speaker 1: that Made the Modern Economy. Some of the inventions I

397
00:30:02,050 --> 00:30:05,290
Speaker 1: talked about were as complex and hyped as the segue,

398
00:30:06,010 --> 00:30:08,970
Speaker 1: but many were as simple and boring as the concert,

399
00:30:10,210 --> 00:30:15,290
Speaker 1: the pencil, the brick, the postage stamp, easy to understand,

400
00:30:15,810 --> 00:30:19,530
Speaker 1: obvious in retrospect, and used in ways that turned out

401
00:30:19,570 --> 00:30:22,970
Speaker 1: to be far more powerful than anyone could have foreseen.

402
00:30:23,690 --> 00:30:29,290
Speaker 1: Often it's the simple ideas that change the world. Sometimes

403
00:30:29,570 --> 00:30:36,210
Speaker 1: they make their inventors rich too. What does a man

404
00:30:36,370 --> 00:30:39,850
Speaker 1: like Jimmy Hesselton do with a couple of hundred million

405
00:30:39,970 --> 00:30:45,730
Speaker 1: pounds to start with? Create jobs? Jimmy built his Hesco

406
00:30:45,810 --> 00:30:49,290
Speaker 1: Bastion factory next to the public housing estate where he

407
00:30:49,330 --> 00:30:53,290
Speaker 1: had grown up. Not much had changed Polton Moore still

408
00:30:53,370 --> 00:30:58,170
Speaker 1: had a grim reputation for poverty and unemployment. Jimmy recruited

409
00:30:58,250 --> 00:31:01,690
Speaker 1: kids who just left the local school, youngsters he said,

410
00:31:01,930 --> 00:31:05,770
Speaker 1: who've grown up without role models. And older workers too,

411
00:31:06,450 --> 00:31:09,770
Speaker 1: those who like him, had been made redundant in life

412
00:31:10,210 --> 00:31:13,850
Speaker 1: and feared they might never work again. He paid them

413
00:31:14,050 --> 00:31:17,730
Speaker 1: way over the going rate, no wonder. They felt loyal

414
00:31:17,770 --> 00:31:21,370
Speaker 1: in return and worked so hard for him. When war

415
00:31:21,490 --> 00:31:24,890
Speaker 1: broke out in Kosovo, the United Nations ordered a load

416
00:31:24,930 --> 00:31:29,330
Speaker 1: of Hesco bastions to protect their forces. Jimmy's workers delivered

417
00:31:29,370 --> 00:31:32,930
Speaker 1: the order ahead of schedule. Jimmy decided to thank them

418
00:31:33,010 --> 00:31:37,050
Speaker 1: by taking them all on vacation to Spain. Jimmy gave

419
00:31:37,130 --> 00:31:41,050
Speaker 1: millions to military charities with no publicity or fuss. He

420
00:31:41,170 --> 00:31:43,690
Speaker 1: set up a foundation to work on projects in his

421
00:31:43,730 --> 00:31:50,330
Speaker 1: local community and gave tens of millions to that. He

422
00:31:50,410 --> 00:31:53,770
Speaker 1: indulged himself too, of course he did. Jimmy bought an

423
00:31:53,770 --> 00:31:57,450
Speaker 1: eighteenth century mill by the river with sixty seven acres

424
00:31:57,450 --> 00:32:00,690
Speaker 1: of land. He employed a team of workers to convert

425
00:32:00,730 --> 00:32:03,970
Speaker 1: it into his dream house. They made the water wheel

426
00:32:04,010 --> 00:32:07,090
Speaker 1: work again, but the dream house never quite got finished

427
00:32:07,250 --> 00:32:10,570
Speaker 1: because Jimmy and his wife Julie but perfectly happy living

428
00:32:10,570 --> 00:32:13,530
Speaker 1: in a small lodge on the site, and Jimmy kept

429
00:32:13,530 --> 00:32:16,610
Speaker 1: getting distracted with other ways. To keep his workers busy,

430
00:32:17,090 --> 00:32:19,730
Speaker 1: he had them build a miniature train track and a

431
00:32:19,770 --> 00:32:23,570
Speaker 1: donkey sanctuary kids from local schools could come for day trips.

432
00:32:23,570 --> 00:32:27,930
Speaker 1: He thought. He built a replica of Stonehenge, because why not.

433
00:32:29,450 --> 00:32:31,690
Speaker 1: He built a museum for the classic cars he had

434
00:32:31,730 --> 00:32:35,970
Speaker 1: collected and Aston Martin d B five, once owned by

435
00:32:36,010 --> 00:32:39,650
Speaker 1: the Beatle George Harrison, a Rolls Royce phantom that belonged

436
00:32:39,650 --> 00:32:43,490
Speaker 1: to the Hollywood star Betty Davis. Jimmy fell in love

437
00:32:43,570 --> 00:32:48,330
Speaker 1: with another form of transport too, the segue. He bought

438
00:32:48,370 --> 00:32:51,450
Speaker 1: an off road version. He liked to scoot around on

439
00:32:51,490 --> 00:32:55,370
Speaker 1: the countryside paths near his house. In two thousand and nine,

440
00:32:55,930 --> 00:32:59,570
Speaker 1: Dean Cayman decided to cut his losses and put the

441
00:32:59,610 --> 00:33:04,850
Speaker 1: Segway company up for sale. Jimmy Hesseledon bought it a

442
00:33:04,890 --> 00:33:09,210
Speaker 1: few months later. One Sunday morning in September, Jimmy took

443
00:33:09,210 --> 00:33:12,370
Speaker 1: his off road segue out for a scoot by the river.

444
00:33:13,330 --> 00:33:16,130
Speaker 1: As he crested a hill, who looked down the path

445
00:33:16,450 --> 00:33:19,930
Speaker 1: to see a man walking his dog about to climb up.

446
00:33:20,570 --> 00:33:26,170
Speaker 1: The path wasn't really wide enough for both of them.

447
00:33:26,370 --> 00:33:30,690
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hesseldon's funeral wasn't held in a church. They put

448
00:33:30,770 --> 00:33:34,090
Speaker 1: up a big marquis on the industrial estate by his factory.

449
00:33:34,890 --> 00:33:39,850
Speaker 1: Two thousand people turned out to pay their respects. Most

450
00:33:39,890 --> 00:33:44,490
Speaker 1: were local. One had flown in from Texas. Sergeant David

451
00:33:44,570 --> 00:33:49,130
Speaker 1: McGregor explained, I'm here to pay tribute. And thanks to

452
00:33:49,130 --> 00:33:52,450
Speaker 1: a man who saved my life through his product. If

453
00:33:52,450 --> 00:33:55,810
Speaker 1: it wasn't for Jimmy's barriers, my wife and children would

454
00:33:55,810 --> 00:33:58,850
Speaker 1: only have a flag to remember me by. As a

455
00:33:58,890 --> 00:34:03,210
Speaker 1: bugler from the Yorkshire Regiment played the last post, a

456
00:34:03,330 --> 00:34:07,570
Speaker 1: thousand green balloons floated up towards the sky, bearing the

457
00:34:07,610 --> 00:34:13,610
Speaker 1: words are to the Heroes. Just a few days had

458
00:34:13,650 --> 00:34:18,730
Speaker 1: passed since those headlines about Jimmy Hesselton's accident Segue Boss

459
00:34:18,890 --> 00:34:23,490
Speaker 1: dies riding one off cliff. It might have looked like

460
00:34:23,530 --> 00:34:28,090
Speaker 1: a darkly ironic footnote to an absurdly over hyped invention,

461
00:34:29,170 --> 00:34:33,170
Speaker 1: but everyone at Jimmy's funeral knew that wasn't the real story.

462
00:34:34,210 --> 00:34:44,970
Speaker 1: It wasn't the real story at all. For a full

463
00:34:45,010 --> 00:34:47,490
Speaker 1: list of our sources, please see the show notes at

464
00:34:47,570 --> 00:35:00,690
Speaker 1: Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me

465
00:35:01,010 --> 00:35:05,690
Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines

466
00:35:05,930 --> 00:35:10,130
Speaker 1: with support from Edith Russlow. The sound design and original

467
00:35:10,250 --> 00:35:14,410
Speaker 1: music is the work of Pascal Wise. The show wouldn't

468
00:35:14,450 --> 00:35:18,050
Speaker 1: have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilley,

469
00:35:18,450 --> 00:35:23,570
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Greta Cone, Natal Millard, John Schnaz, Karlie Migliori,

470
00:35:24,010 --> 00:35:30,130
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, and Morgan Ratner Portionary Tales.

471
00:35:30,170 --> 00:35:33,730
Speaker 1: He's a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,

472
00:35:34,170 --> 00:35:37,410
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review. It helps us

473
00:35:37,410 --> 00:35:40,810
Speaker 1: for mysterious reasons, and if you want to hear the show,

474
00:35:40,930 --> 00:35:44,410
Speaker 1: add free sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show

475
00:35:44,450 --> 00:35:49,210
Speaker 1: page and Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash

476
00:35:49,410 --> 00:35:49,770
Speaker 1: plus