DETROIT - Robert Kearns, the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers, has died of cancer, according to family members. He was 77.
Kearns died Feb. 9 at his home in suburban Baltimore and was buried in Michigan on a misty Valentine's Day (news - web sites).
"It was going just enough to have the wipers going on intermittent. I thought, `How appropriate,'" Kearns' daughter, Maureen Kearns, told the Detroit Free Press for a story published Friday.
Kearns was born in Gary, Ind., and grew up in suburban Detroit. He was a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), during World War II. After the war, he earned engineering degrees from the University of Detroit and Wayne State University and a doctorate from Case Western Reserve University.
In 1967, Kearns patented the intermittent wipers he invented. He demonstrated the system to Ford Motor Co., which introduced cars with intermittent wipers in 1978. Other automakers soon followed.
Kearns filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Ford and collected $10 million in 1990. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) let Kearns collect around $21 million from Chrysler Corp. for using his design.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...us/obit_kearns
Kearns died Feb. 9 at his home in suburban Baltimore and was buried in Michigan on a misty Valentine's Day (news - web sites).
"It was going just enough to have the wipers going on intermittent. I thought, `How appropriate,'" Kearns' daughter, Maureen Kearns, told the Detroit Free Press for a story published Friday.
Kearns was born in Gary, Ind., and grew up in suburban Detroit. He was a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), during World War II. After the war, he earned engineering degrees from the University of Detroit and Wayne State University and a doctorate from Case Western Reserve University.
In 1967, Kearns patented the intermittent wipers he invented. He demonstrated the system to Ford Motor Co., which introduced cars with intermittent wipers in 1978. Other automakers soon followed.
Kearns filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Ford and collected $10 million in 1990. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) let Kearns collect around $21 million from Chrysler Corp. for using his design.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...us/obit_kearns
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