North Dumpling Island
Dean Kamen's home on North Dumpling Island
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| Geography | |
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| Location | Fishers Island Sound, Southold, New York |
| Coordinates | 41°17′17″N 72°01′08″W / 41.288025°N 72.018903°WCoordinates: 41°17′17″N 72°01′08″W / 41.288025°N 72.018903°W |
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North Dumpling Island is the northernmost of two islands in Fishers Island Sound, located about 0.3 nautical miles (550 m) north of South Dumpling Island. The two-acre (8,000 m²) island is privately owned by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter and founder of FIRST, and is home to the North Dumpling Lighthouse. It is a mile (1.6 km) off the coast of Connecticut, south of Groton, Connecticut, but is within the territory of the town of Southold in New York State.
The island was bought by John Winthrop, son of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and owned by the Winthrop family until 1847, when it was sold to the federal government to be the site of a lighthouse. In 1959, the beacon was automated and the lighthouse and grounds were sold to a private party. In 1986, Kamen bought it.
After Kamen was denied permission to build a wind turbine on the island, he joked that he was seceding from the United States. The island's electrical system was later converted to a combination of wind and solar power with the help of Fritz Morgan, Chief Technology Officer of Philips Color Kinetics, operating independently of the regional electrical grid. This was accomplished by replacing all lighting on the island with LEDs, which resulted in a 70% reduction of in-house energy consumption. Kamen says that the island is carbon neutral due to solar panels on every building, a 10 kW wind turbine, and a "little" Stirling engine for backup power.
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