6. The Segway was predicted more than thirty years prior to their creation but was inaccurate when it came to design and the popularity of use
In 1962, Italian weekly publication Domenica del Corriere made a bold prediction: that in the future humans would not move via ambulation as we had since the dawn of time but instead employ machines to move us on our behalf. As can be seen in the illustration above, the magazine determined that in the not so distant future wheeled upright contraptions would mechanically transport humans in a standing position. Equally, these individuals would be sealed within enclosed cases, presumably to protect from wind, rain, and as a safety precaution. Credit must be given, to a certain extent, for the accurate imaginations of the publication, for by the 1990s such a device was indeed invented: the Segway. Developed by The University of Plymouth and BAE Systems, the Segway was successfully patented in 1997 as a self-balancing wheelchair.
Indeed, one can almost excuse the wild overestimation by the magazine in the 1960s, as contemporary excitement for the impending machines reached fever-pitch in the early 2000s. Venture-capitalist John Doerr claimed the Segway would be more important to humanity than the Internet whilst Steve Jobs incredulously stated that the invention was “as big a deal as the PC”.Released in 2002 to much public fanfare, the Segway, whilst commercially successful, failed to become anything more than a curiosity and object of occasional use. It most certainly did not become, as was predicted in both the 1960s and 1990s, the future of human movement. Today the Segway is predominantly used by tourists for sightseeing and by police departments, but, ironically, cannot be legally marketed, per its original patent, as a medical device. Despite efforts to do so under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the FDA has refused to accredit the Segway with this license due to a lack of supporting evidence of medical benefit.