Bob Kearns’ compulsions cost him his wife, sanity, children and more than $50 million in out-of-court settlements.
But he persisted in endless trials with Ford Motor Company and other automotive giants. He believed the courts would force them to admit they stole his invention — the intermittent windshield wiper.
“We thought it was normal,” said Bob’s son Tim Kearns of Oxford, Md., about his father’s decades-long obsession. “Now all these years later, we find it’s not at all.”
The film, “Flash of Genius,” follows Bob Kearns from happier days as a Detroit college professor and family man to his invention of the wiper and his addiction to pursuing vindication. He eventually spirals out of control and boards a bus, believing he can ride to Australia and that President Richard Nixon commissioned him to build an electric car. After the episode, in the film and in reality, his family commits him to a psychiatric ward. Released, Bob continues to neglect his family, consumed with trials.
“The case isn’t just a trial,” Bob told Regardie’s magazine in 1990. “It’s about the meaning of Bob Kearns’ life.”
Fifteen years before he died, Bob bought a house along the Wye River on the Eastern Shore, but continued for some time living in hotel rooms in Texas and other states where his attorneys were, Tim said.
“He wasn’t a great father,” said director Marc Abraham. “He fought this battle probably past what 99.9 percent of us would ever do. But the one thing each of his six children comes away with is a sense of justice. To this day, all six children have warm feelings for their father and are reverential. That shows you the power of an idea.”
Even after Bob — who died in a Sykesville nursing home in 2005 — won more than $30 million in settlements, “it wasn’t over and probably still isn’t,” Tim said. “It goes on. It’s about inventors’ rights and the patent system. My father use to say the main reason he did what he did was because otherwise he would be teaching it’s OK to steal.”
In his final years, Bob drove a 1968 Chrysler New Yorker — without intermittent windshield wipers. “He wasn’t going to condone their actions even by driving their cars,” Tim said.
FOR MORE INFO
‘Flash of Genius’
Starring Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney and Alan Alda
Opens Oct. 3.
www.flashofgenius.net
