Robert Kearns won $10 million in court. The plot from the biopic "Glimpse of Genius"; starring Greg Kinnear. Photo from livejournal.com
It would not be a big exaggeration if we say that the history of the invention of car wipers is directly related to the struggle of American women for equality. True, at first they were invented by one Polish composer, Joseph Hoffman, but since he was still a composer, he did not bother to patent his invention.
Therefore, the fame of the pioneers of windshield cleaning went to two American women who took intellectual property rights more seriously, thanks to which we know the exact date of the beginning of the history of car wipers - 1903.
Exploitation of American women
It was a time when, in bad weather, American cars moved on the roads thanks to women - the wives of drivers who leaned out of the cars and informed their spouses about the situation on the road. (The drivers, deprived of female society, had to stop and clear their view every now and then).
Naturally, not everyone liked to ride in the snow or in the rain, leaning out of the car. Or rather, we can assume that no one liked it, but such was the tradition at that time, which had developed due to the lack of equality between the sexes and windshield wipers.
Substitute
And so the young American Mary Anderson decided to replace women in this difficult task with a special mechanism that cleans the windshield from rain and snow and thus allows the driver to do without the help of female navigational abilities. And since Mary was not only a woman, but also an American, when she invented the first windshield wiper, she patented it first.
Mary's invention was a rubber roller with a lever that could be operated from inside the machine. True, similar inventions were made before, but for Mary, firstly, it (the invention) worked, and secondly, it was patented.
However, popularity car wipers acquired only ten years later (Ford began manufacturing cars in 1908). By 1913 windshield wipers were standard. automotive part.
And by 1917, life improved not only for the wives of motorists, but also for the car owners themselves, who no longer had to work with their hands. Another American, Charlotte Bridgwood, who heads the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company of New York, invented and, of course, patented the electric roller wiper.
It also took ten years for conservative Americans to adopt this idea. Although the first working models went on sale as early as 1920, automobile conservatives believed that the constant swinging of the wipers in front of their eyes would distract the driver from the road.
Then windshield wipers were improved many times. One of the reasons for them evolutionary development was a change in shape windshield, which each has its own for trucks, special utility vehicles and other mobiles, and is selected, as you all know, individually, according to the BAW spare parts catalog. But that's another story, and we'll continue talking about the impact of patents on big business.
Failed business
In 1962, Detroit resident and Ford owner Robert Kearns came up with the idea to create car wipers that mimic the movement of human eyelids. And in 1964, he patented a windscreen wiper with intermittent (blinking) operation.
And then he made the biggest mistake that the owner of a patent for a new and popular invention can only make. He overestimated his abilities as a businessman. Cairns decided that he could become something like the founder of the Gillette empire (inventor and owner of the patent for the T-razor). But he did not take into account that before Gillette the shaving industry did not exist, and in his time there were already automotive giants.
Or rather, Kearns for some reason decided that Ford would be happy to buy new wipers from him, instead of making them himself. So he refused to sell his patent and started creating own firm for the production of new windshield wipers.
Then something happened that usually happens in the business world. The big shark ate the small competitor. Ford first bought a trial license for the windshield wipers to use on one of the models and assured Kearns of further close cooperation. But soon he began an independent production of blinking wipers, the original, as he announced, design. And Cairns was left with unclaimed equipment, bought with large loans.
However, the inventor had more perseverance than business abilities. And since 1978, for 12 years, Kearns led a long lawsuit over the infringement of his copyright with Ford ( Ford motor Corporation) and still won the first case in 1990, suing him for $ 10.1 million. And in 1992, he received $18.7 million from Chrysler Corporation. Other
he also did not let the automotive giants get bored.
However, if Kearns had realistically assessed the prospects of his business from the very beginning, he could simply trade licenses and receive small royalties from each new windshield wiper of his design. I don’t know if he would have received more money than he managed to sue (although, probably, he would have received it anyway), but how much time, effort and, most importantly, nerves, he would have saved himself! After all, as we see, a patent in the West is a great force. You just need to use it correctly.
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Robert Kearns is an American engineer who first invented and patented the first mechanism for automobiles in 1964. The design innovation of a smart American first gained popularity in 1969.
Robert is famous all over the world for the fact that he won several scandalous court hearings over patent rights from large automotive companies. The thing is that when Robert Williams Kearns (not to be confused with the Swedish folklorist poet Robert Burns, photos below) came up with the mechanism of car windshield wipers (1964), he began to offer his development to several powerful corporations, such as Ford and Chrysler.
An American inventor patented his product and wanted to produce them for large automobile companies, which, in turn, were developing a similar product. Robert did not receive a positive response, but after a few years he learned that his invention had been appropriated by the above automobile companies. And then Robert thought...
American inventor Robert Kearns: biography
In the 60s, Robert Kearns married Phyllis. The couple had six children.
American inventor Robert Kearns: where did the idea come from?
In 1953, Robert went blind in one eye when he unsuccessfully opened a bottle of champagne and the cork flew into his eye. Every year his eyesight deteriorated, and with the slightest rain, it was difficult for Kearns to see the road when he was driving a car.
One day Robert was driving home and it started to rain heavily. At this point, the engineer comes up with the idea of how to create a useful mechanical device that will clean the water from the windshield. Keeping the idea in mind, the next day, Robert began to develop such a mechanism.
After several weeks of experimental research, he created moving "wipers" in the likeness of repeating the movements of the eyelids of the human eye. The only thing left to do was to develop the necessary documentation and test this design on your own car.
After successful exploitation, Robert patents his product and visits the engineering office of the Ford automobile company, which has been working on the same problem to no avail.
Bad News: Deception
Surprised by this, manager McLean Tyler suggested that Kearns compile a business plan and calculate the cost of running car wipers for fabrication. But Robert said that he would like to manufacture windshield wipers himself, after which it was not possible to reach a consensus.
However, Kearns had already demonstrated the operation of the mechanism in practice, and even provided all the necessary documentation, which was subsequently preserved by McLean Tyler. Ultimately, after a visit to the Ford plant, Robert stopped calling and notifying him with news. A few years later, Cairns accidentally got to the presentation of a new sports car Ford, where he saw his "wipers". At this moment, a depressed Robert realizes that he was simply deceived and appropriated his invention.
Litigation spanning 35 years
Robert was shocked that he had been deceived like a foolish boy. Without thinking twice, he decides to go to court in Washington. But when it became known that a simple American engineer of advanced age intended to challenge Ford, he was sent for treatment to a psychiatric ward, where he was diagnosed with a "nervous breakdown".
After some time, Robert manages to be discharged from the hospital. His condition was again on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he gathered his courage and will and continued to fight. Relatives and friends tried in every possible way to dissuade Kearns from this crazy idea. But all attempts to convince the true creator car windshield wipers were ineffective. As a result, Robert lost his family: his wife left him and took the children with her.
All legal attempts were paid from Robert's pocket, it was hard, but he did not give up. Kearns sued two major auto companies at once - Ford (from 1978 to 1990) and Chrysler (from 1982 to 1992). In the end, Robert Kearns won his lawsuits and received a cash settlement of $10 million from Ford and, five years later, $19 million from Chrysler.
Mechanical wipers
Until 1903, precipitation caused motorists a lot of trouble. To improve visibility, drivers had to stop and manually wipe the windows. This problem was solved by a woman - a young American Mary Anderson. It is to her that the invention of windshield wipers for cars is attributed.
The idea to make life easier for motorists came to Mary while traveling from Alabama to New York. It snowed and rained all the way. Mary Anderson saw drivers constantly stop, open the windows of their cars and remove snow from windshield . Mary decided that this process could be improved and began to design a windshield wiper.
Got a device with rotating handle and rubber roller. The first windshield wipers had a lever that allowed them to be operated from inside the car. With the help of a lever, a pressure device with an elastic band described an arc on the glass, removing raindrops, snow flakes from the glass and returned to its original position.
Mary Anderson received a patent for her invention in 1903. Similar devices have been developed before, but Mary ended up with a device that actually works. In addition, its windshield wipers were easily removed.
At the beginning of the last century, cars were not yet very popular (Henry Ford did not create his famous car until 1908), so many scoffed at Anderson's idea. Skeptics believed that the movement of the brushes would distract drivers. However, by 1913, thousands of Americans had own cars, A mechanical wipers(no matter how ridiculous it may sound now) became standard equipment.
Automatic windshield wipers
The automatic windshield wiper was invented by another woman inventor, Charlotte Bridgwood. She headed the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company of New York. In 1917, Charlotte Bridgwood patented an electric roller windshield wiper called the Storm Windshield Cleaner.
The design of the brushes has not changed much since its inception. The main component of the windshield wiper is a rubber element. Special differences different wipers- in the composition of rubber and the quality of the material. Now they do not produce windshield wipers from pure rubber, as it freezes in the cold in winter, and in summer it heats up in the sun to 70-80 degrees, from which the rubber bursts or dries out. In addition, manufacturers of glass cleaning fluids often do not take into account the reactivity to rubber. Therefore, the composition of modern wipers includes silicone, Teflon, graphite, natural rubber.
Video of the process of creating frame wipers
For a quality brush are important recipe and manufacturing technology. If you look closely at the cleaning element, it is easy to see what a complex structure it has.
Firstly, this is a complex cross-sectional profile, while the more expensive and better brush, the more difficult the rubber profile. Modern cleaning elements also have a complex internal structure. The working part of the "gum" is made of hard and wear resistant rubber or a special silicone-graphite mixture. The inflection point is made of elastic and soft silicone, since the working part bends when moving up and down. The fastening is made of durable heat-resistant rubber. Then everything is sintered into a single whole.
The curvature of the pressure plate at the wipers allows the wiper element to fit tightly and evenly to the entire surface of the glass. However, it should be noted that the windshield wiper sometimes does not fully adhere to the glass surface and, especially in the place of maximum bending of the glass.
Some inventions look so simple and familiar that it is already impossible to imagine reality without them. So, few people can believe that once there were no wipers on the windshields of cars. It wasn't until 1913 that a mechanical windshield wiper became standard.
The creator of the first working prototype of wipers is considered to be Mary Anderson, an American realtor, wine grower and inventor. She is best known as the creator of cleaning wipers. automotive glass. Anderson was born in Green County, Alabama, USA in 1866. Three years later, Mary with her widowed mother and sister moved, without leaving Alabama, to the city of Birmingham. And in the winter of 1903 she visited New York.
One frosty day she had to take a ride in a trolley bus. Mary noticed that the driver had to drive the trolley bus with open window, despite the biting frost and biting wind - otherwise it was difficult to maintain a normal view due to the falling snow. Back in Alabama, Anderson designed a windshield wiper. With the help of a local company, Mary produced a prototype of the developed device; in 1903, she received a patent for her invention (for a period of 17 years).
The design of the Anderson wiper is simple - it is a lever inside the cabin, with which it was possible to control a rubber bar attached to the outside. With a lever, the driver moved the wiper on the glass, erasing the adhering snow. The bar-mounted weight made cleaning particularly efficient.
Similar devices were invented before Anderson, but Mary became the first who managed to create something really convenient and practical. In 1905, she tried to sell her patent to a well-known Canadian company, but she was refused - the entrepreneurs felt that the likely income did not cover the difficulties associated with production. Car wipers gained popularity only 10 years after the invention.
And in 1917, another American, Charlotte Bridgwood, head of the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company of New York, invented and, of course, patented the electric roller wiper. It also took the Americans 10 years to accept this idea. Although the first working models went on sale as early as 1920, automobile conservatives believed that the constant swinging of the wipers in front of their eyes would distract the driver from the road.
Then windshield wipers were improved many times. In 1962, Detroit resident and Ford owner Robert Kearns came up with the idea to create car wipers that mimic the movement of human eyelids. And in 1964, he patented a windscreen wiper with intermittent (blinking) operation.
Some inventions look so simple and familiar that it is already impossible to imagine reality without them. So, few people can believe that once there were no wipers on the windshields of cars. It wasn't until 1913 that a mechanical windshield wiper became standard.
The creator of the first working prototype of wipers is considered to be Mary Anderson, an American realtor, wine grower and inventor. Most of all, she is known as the creator of windshield wipers. Anderson was born in Green County, Alabama, USA in 1866. Three years later, Mary with her widowed mother and sister moved, without leaving Alabama, to the city of Birmingham. And in the winter of 1903 she visited New York.
One frosty day she had to take a ride in a trolley bus. Mary noticed that the driver had to drive the trolleybus with the window open, despite the bitter cold and biting wind - otherwise it was difficult to maintain a normal view due to the falling snow. Back in Alabama, Anderson designed a windshield wiper. With the help of a local company, Mary produced a prototype of the developed device; in 1903, she received a patent for her invention (for a period of 17 years).
The design of the Anderson wiper is simple - it is a lever inside the cabin, with which it was possible to control a rubber bar attached to the outside. With a lever, the driver moved the wiper on the glass, erasing the adhering snow. The bar-mounted weight made cleaning particularly efficient.
Similar devices were invented before Anderson, but Mary became the first who managed to create something really convenient and practical. In 1905, she tried to sell her patent to a well-known Canadian company, but she was refused - the entrepreneurs felt that the likely income did not cover the difficulties associated with production. Car wipers gained popularity only 10 years after the invention.
And in 1917, another American, Charlotte Bridgwood, head of the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company of New York, invented and, of course, patented the electric roller wiper. It also took the Americans 10 years to accept this idea. Although the first working models went on sale as early as 1920, automobile conservatives believed that the constant swinging of the wipers in front of their eyes would distract the driver from the road.
Then windshield wipers were improved many times. In 1962, Detroit resident and Ford owner Robert Kearns came up with the idea to create car wipers that mimic the movement of human eyelids. And in 1964, he patented a windscreen wiper with intermittent (blinking) operation.
