Flash of Genius‘ plot turns around Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), who invented the intermittent wiper. This is how he explains the starting point:
[...] I’m legally blind in my left eye, and I’ve thought about the human eye because of that ever since. And years ago, I was riding back from church with my family and it was drizzling outside, and I had a thought. Why couldn’t a wiper work like an eyelid? Why couldn’t it blink? That’s how I came up with it.
After developing the device, Dr. Kerns had some trouble in getting recognition for his invention, against the automotive manufacturing companies. His perseverance and will to fight for justice made him finally creditor for his beloved creation: “To you, maybe [it's just a windshield wiper]. To that bartender up there. But to me it’s the Mona Lisa.”
- Look at this. I turn this thing off, seconds later, I can’t see.
- I can’t see, either.
- So you turn it back on, and now the windshield’s clean, but the wipers are dragging. [...] All right, so it’s raining and I turn it back off. But now I can barely see. [...] If I don’t turn this thing on right now, we’ll hit somebody.
- Turn it on, honey. Please. [...]
- All right. All right. Ten thousand engineers in Detroit, you’d think they’d know how to design an automobile.
[...]
- What are you doing?
- Oh, I was thinking about how eyes work. We blink about every four, six seconds, and there’s this lachrymal fluid and…
- Really?
- Interesting.—
- Well, that’s the damnedest thing.
- Yeah.
- Get this, it’s also possible to build a timing control into the wiper column so that you could adjust the time between movements.
- Well, why?
- Well, because it obviously rains at different intensity levels.
- Right.
- That’s part of the whole idea.
[...]
- What are you gonna call it?
- The Kearns Blinking Eye Wiper.
- Yeah. Well, I’m not sure about the name.—
- Hiya, Bob.
- Hey, Gil.
- Frank Sertin, Vice President of Research and Development, meet Bob Kearns, the inventor of the Intermittent Windshield Wiper.
- Oh, we’ll see. We’ll see.
[...]
- It’ll do that all day, engine running or not.
- Well, that is… That’s good.
- We call this “variable speed.”
- Variable speed.
- “Variable dwell.”
- That is very impressive.
[...] Look for the unobvious. Yeah. So you do listen. All right. Well, we’re just looking for a measured, consistent pause. Like your eye, right there. See that? The way it blinks away a tear? And we could try a bimetallic timer that responds to heat changes. But then, of course, what do we do on a cold day?
[...] I want you to solder this, all right? Dennis, help him out. Get over here. [...] That’s got a transistor and a capacitor, and resistors in there. That’s as simple as I can get it. That’s when you get real beauty. When less is more. Will it work? It works up here [in a radio] perfectly. We got resistors, each one rated at a different tolerance. And each one should work in a wiper motor. Where are the meter cords? Uh, just over there…
Of course, there’s a thousand different combinations. Our job is to find the one that works. And there is one that’ll work in theory. You know, [Guglielmo] Marconi spent seven years trying to perfect the radio. [...]
Well, what do you know about that? One, two, three, now!
[...] Wow! That’s it, it’s going. It’s alive! It moves! It pauses! It’s alive!—
[Sentences from the trial:]
Now, this array of electronic parts and this combination of circuitry has been used by American auto manufacturers since the 1950s. Obviously since Ford engineers designed it, they had knowledge of it long before their first meeting with Dr. Kearns…
Would you agree that Dr. Kearns was the first person in the world, to your knowledge, to propose that combination?
I believe it’s possible that it was Motorola and Ranco. They may have.
The motor makes one revolution to get one wipe out of 360 degrees. It’s very simple.
Well, certainly it is important to understand that within the Ford organization, it takes some time to get written…
Well, when you start the car, the transistors come on automatically and supply 50 timesas much current.
—
[Questions to Professor Chapman during the trial:]
- Now, when you said earlier that Mr. Kearns didn’t create anything new, could you explain what you meant by that?
- Yes. As you can see, Dr. Kearns’s basic unit consists of a capacitor, a variable resistor and a transistor. Now, these are basic building blocks in electronics. You can find them in any catalog. All Mr. Kearns did was to arrange them in a new pattern, you might say. And that, that’s not the same thing as inventing something new, however.
- Did Mr. Kearns invent the transistor?
- No, sir, he did not.
- Did Mr. Kearns invent the capacitor?
- Again, no, he did not.
- Did Mr. Kearns invent the variable resistor?
- No, he did not.
- Thank you, Professor.[...]
[Dr. Kearns cross-examination:]
- I have here a book. It’s by Charles Dickens. It’s called A Tale of Two Cities[...] I’d like to read you the first, few words, if I may. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Let’s start with the first word, “It.” Did Charles Dickens create that word?
- No.
- No. What about “was”?
- “The”?
- No.
- “Best”?
- No.
- “Times”? Look. I got a dictionary here. I haven’t checked, but I would guess that every word that’s in this book can be found in this dictionary.
- Well, I suspect that’s probably true.
- Okay, so then you agree that there’s not, probably a single new word in this book.
- Well, I don’t know, but that’s probably true.
- All Charles Dickens did was arrange them into a new pattern, isn’t that right?
- Well, I admit I haven’t, thought about it in that way.
- But Dickens did create something new, didn’t he? By using words. The only tools that were available to him. Just as almost all inventors in history have had to use the tools that were available to them. Telephones, space satellites all of these were made from parts that already existed, correct, Professor? Parts that you might buy out of a catalog.
- Technically that’s true, yes, but that does…
- No further questions.
