His impaired vision caused many hardships, one of which was operating windshield wipers in the rain. A windshield wiper that mimics the human eyeĪ decade earlier, on his wedding night, Kearns had popped open a bottle of champagne in his face and permanently blinded his left eye. Then, in 1962, the 35-year-old had a stroke of genius. He toyed around with various non-automotive inventions - a grease-dispensing hair comb, a voice amplifier, a weather balloon, a navigation system - but nothing stuck.

“If you were an inventor, and you really wanted to reach people, you invented for the automotive.” Robert Kearns (second from left) with his family (via Facebook’s public figure page)ĭetermined to make his mark in this industry, Kearns earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and began working toward his Ph.D. “The automotive - that’s all there was,” he later told the New Yorker’s John Seabrook. An inventor is bornīorn in 1927, Kearns spent his youth in Detroit, Michigan, ground zero for the flourishing American automobile industry.Īs a kid, he toured Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Complex (then the largest integrated factory in the world) and marveled at the auto giant’s innovations. But it’s also a reminder of the shortcomings of the US patent system for independent inventors. Kearns’ story is remembered as one of history’s great David vs. In the end, he won millions of dollars - but it cost him his sanity, his marriage, and the remaining years of his life. He constructed prototypes in his basement, filed a patent, and began to dream up a plan: He’d set up a pretty little factory in Detroit, become a major supplier of windshield wipers, and go down in history as one of the automobile industry’s great innovators.įor nearly 30 years, Kearns waged an impossible legal battle against one of America’s most powerful companies. On a rainy day in 1962, Robert Kearns had one of those meandering thoughts that separate great inventors from mere mortals: What if a windshield wiper paused between each wipe, like a blinking eye?

Epic Inventor