DETROIT -- You may never have known his name, but Robert Kearns was responsible for making driving on a drizzly day a lot easier and a lot quieter. The man who invented intermittent windshield wipers has died at the age of 77.
His daughter said Kearns was buried, appropriately enough, on a misty day when it rained "just enough to have the wipers going on intermittent."
Kearns patented his intermittent system in 1967 and then demonstrated it for Ford Motor Co. Eleven years later, when Ford began installing the wipers on new cars, Kearns sued the automaker and won.
He collected $10 million from Ford and another $21 million from Chrysler.
But Kearns called the settlements a travesty because the court didn't stop the carmakers from using his design. So he kept filing lawsuits.