Best Inventions: Where It's At

A machine code-named Ginger was all the buzz last January. And now?

What is "It"? For a week or so last January, that was the question on everybody's lips. After the Harvard Business School Press advanced $250,000 for a book about It--a top-secret project under development by one of the most accomplished inventors in the U.S.--reams of newsprint were devoted to speculation about what It might be.

The recipient of the advance, author Steve Kemper, gushed in his book proposal that It--code-named Ginger--would revolutionize personal transportation, urban design and our daily lives. Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs said It could be bigger than the PC. Everyone had a different theory: Ginger was cold...

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