By the age of 16, Dean Kamen (famed for his invention of the Segway Human Transporter) had made a small fortune selling his first invention -- a control unit for light and sound shows -- to such clients as New York's Hayden Planetarium. "I used some of the money to send my parents on a two-week vacation," he later recalled, "and I used the rest of it to buy myself some really great machine tools for the workshop I had set up in my parents' basement."
Unfortunately, some of the new equipment would not fit in a basement. Kamen, however, had a solution. He simply hired a contractor to dig a massive hole in the back yard, knock through the foundation wall, and expand the cellar. His parents soon returned from Hawaii -- and found their home on stilts (erected to prevent it from falling into the aforementioned hole). Kamen later recalled their reaction: "They were not amused."
Sources
Biography magazine, Oct. 2003, p. 74
