Hmm… It’s not that hard
Dean Kamen’s BEST INVENTION OF ALL TIME IS:
F.I.R.S.T!
If it wasn’t for FIRST, we wouldn’t even be here discussing Dean Kamen’s crazy inventions. Instead of “wasting” our time with robots, we would be tracking college basketball, and maybe playing it ourselves. And one thing is for sure:
America would have a LOT LESS ENGINEERS.
FIRST also inspires people to become engineers. Instead of becoming engineers, more people would try and fail at athletics, and/or try to become a lawyer or doctor (we have too many lawyers, anyways) But American NEEDS engineers. We have such a shortage of engineers that we hire them from India, Europe, and Japan; which all have a surplus of engineers. And still, we don’t have enough. Dean Kamen was definitely thinking about this when he started FIRST.
Because of the Chairman’s award (which 461 won in Chicago), teams are focusing more on the other, greater aspects of FIRST, such as getting the community interested in FIRST, and starting other FIRST teams, which then say “Hey, we want that award”, and therefore, the rookies start other rookie teams. It’s a domino effect, and it’s great!
FIRST has also helped people out of gangs. (Me personally, I would stay with one:o ) It has also helped people who were straight flunking high school to becoming engineers.
The success of inventions is not measured by money made, but by how much of an impact and benifit it has on how many people. I can say that FIRST has probably inspired more than, say 100,000 students, and that number will also grow exponentially. This is more than any other of Dean’s inventions, and the benefit it has on one individual is far greater that any other.
For these reasons, Dean’s best invention is:
FIRST!!!