Has anyone read that patent? I haven't. But many patents are issued
for their unique method of implementation, not necessarily the overall
idea. ----In other words, the feature that got the patent could have
been a non-obvious or super cheap(at the time) timer and switch
mechanism rather than the "idea" of intermittent wipers.
Guess I'll have to see the movie, too.

In the Twin Cities, there's an inventors club that meets monthly. This
sort of thing is exactly what they meet about. The mentor of that club
puts on a one day seminar now and then that explains how to go about
patenting things. The point is, as some other posters have said, ideas
ARE a dime a dozen. It's the people who push them that make them go.

One saying around the company I worked for was: "Prove that you can
sell $100,000 worth of them (it) in the first year or forget it."

Hey, Tom, are you related to the folks who made the movie? Was all this
just to sell more tickets? ---Just kidding.

Pete Stanaitis
----------------------------



Tom Gardner wrote:
I'm seeing previews for the movie about the invention of intermittent wipers
in '63. Think how things have changed in 45 years. Today, a manager at a
design firm would tell a group of engineers to design such a system and have
several designs on his desk by the end of the day. True, they didn't have
555s in '63. So, is it that a unique idea is a lot more important than the
actual design?

If you remember some of my previous posts about nurturing ideas that lead to
designs, this has been an area of extreme interest to me. In the movie, it
looks like Ford screws the idea/design guy, which makes me sick. Designers
and model builders need more respect but idea guys need to be revered!
(coming from a guy that has had very, very few, if any, original ideas)

Don Foreman wrote:
On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:30:39 GMT, BobH
wrote:

My employer paid $500 or $1k and I never felt shorted during the
process, but 5 years later when the subpoena to defend the a patent that
had been sold to a bunch of litigous trolls showed up 4 days before
Christmas, I was way less than pleased. After spending a couple of days
preparing and giving deposition, I felt distinctly screwed on that $500
or $1k.

Why? The $500 or $1K was an "award" or honorarium for assigning
rights to said to your employer. Defending it is then his problem. If
he needs your help, he should pay for your time and services like he
does for any other time and services.

Every patent I have disclosed to an employer came with the express
language that you would help them or their assignee defend the patent.
There was no language in the subpoena suggesting that there is any
compensation or anything other than negative consequences for ignoring it.

Filing patents for your employer is a lot like signing up for the
military in peacetime for their college benefits. You may get what you
expected, but you may wind up getting a completely different education,
at a time you did not expect.
I'm seeing more gimmewhine than professional here. Signing with the
military in peacetime or anytime conveys obligations as well as
benefits. Well duh! The military does not exist primarily to provide
college benefits. It exists to defend the nation against enemies
foreign and domestic. There is never a guarantee that there won't be
any enemies around during your service period. Pick yer pony, take
yer ride.

This is pretty much my point. Filling in the patent disclosure carries
obligations as well as the payoff. It is completely obvious that signing
up for the military carries obligations, that is why I used it for
comparison.

If your employer wants your professional services to help defend his
patent, fine. If he doesn't, that's his choice.

I would have been fine with defending the patent if I had any connection
to the litigants. That was the obligation I thought I was signing up for
when I filed the disclosure. As it was, both companies were operations
that I have very low regard for and unrelated to the company that I
filed the disclosure to.

Part of being a professional is being ready to move at any time. The
alternative is becoming an indentured servant in exchange for an
illusion of security. Having to move can certaintly be very
inconvenient and expensive. In my case, clear willingness to do it
if and when necessary always made it unnecessary.

I think that the expectations between an employer and employee have
changed. In todays engineering world, most employers will put you on the
street if it solves a quartely cash flow problem. That lack of long term
trust, means that employers cannot ask as much of the employee anymore.
I have done two interstate moves for employers and at this point, I
might do another one, but it would have to be to somewhere I want to go.

It would take singularly stupid management to **** off their most
prolific inventors, but there's no shortage of stupid management and
that does seem to be getting worse. My experience is dated, having
been retired for 9 years now.

You picked a good time to retire. Engineering has changed markedly in
the last decade. I have another 10 years to go before I retire.

BobH

In article ,
spaco wrote:

Has anyone read that patent? I haven't. But many patents are issued
for their unique method of implementation, not necessarily the overall
idea. ----In other words, the feature that got the patent could have
been a non-obvious or super cheap(at the time) timer and switch
mechanism rather than the "idea" of intermittent wipers.
Guess I'll have to see the movie, too.

The patents are listed in the Wikipedia article on the inventor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

Use http://www.pat2pdf.org to obtain the patents.

Joe Gwinn


In the Twin Cities, there's an inventors club that meets monthly. This
sort of thing is exactly what they meet about. The mentor of that club
puts on a one day seminar now and then that explains how to go about
patenting things. The point is, as some other posters have said, ideas
ARE a dime a dozen. It's the people who push them that make them go.

One saying around the company I worked for was: "Prove that you can
sell $100,000 worth of them (it) in the first year or forget it."

Hey, Tom, are you related to the folks who made the movie? Was all this
just to sell more tickets? ---Just kidding.

Pete Stanaitis
----------------------------



Tom Gardner wrote:
I'm seeing previews for the movie about the invention of intermittent
wipers
in '63. Think how things have changed in 45 years. Today, a manager at a
design firm would tell a group of engineers to design such a system and
have
several designs on his desk by the end of the day. True, they didn't have
555s in '63. So, is it that a unique idea is a lot more important than the
actual design?

If you remember some of my previous posts about nurturing ideas that lead
to
designs, this has been an area of extreme interest to me. In the movie, it
looks like Ford screws the idea/design guy, which makes me sick. Designers
and model builders need more respect but idea guys need to be revered!
(coming from a guy that has had very, very few, if any, original ideas)

On 28 Sep 2008 02:36:04 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2008-09-27, Winston wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:


The intermittent windshield wiper became practical when SCRs
(Silicon Controlled Rectifiers) or power transistors and circuits like
the 555 timer chip became inexpensive enough.

(...)

I think the advent of the intermittent wiper and that of
cheap, high power semiconductors is largely a coincidence.
I do agree they were a match made in heaven regarding cost and
reliability.

Indeed.

Heck, if they had though of it, the folks in Detroit *could've*
made an 'intermittent' wiper control with a modified turn signal
blinker relay as early as 1926!

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/in.../windwiper.htm

Intersting. I would have sworn that all were vacuum powered at
that time -- but apparently I just neve looked at a high-end car from
that period -- or at least not with the idea of examining the windshield
wiper motor. I do know that the vacuum-operated ones were really nasty,
as when you were accelerating (and thus needed them most) they would
slow to a crawl. :-)


Unless you had a double acting fuel pump which gave vacuum for the
wipers as well as pumping fuel. Common on the last Chevies to use vac
wipers, as well as some AMC cars.
What combination of parts (within your easy reach) will
be a revolutionary design feature *41 years from today*?

I don't know -- yet. For that matter it may be something which
I have made and just take for granted, and nobody else knows about. :-)

If you demonstrate it Monday afternoon, you will be a genius.

You can bet your bottom someone will come along on Tuesday
morning and call it 'obvious'.

:-)

Obvious to me, at least. :-)

I do have a few patents (with the government having free access
to them, because I was working for the government at that time, and they
paid for the processing of the patents. :-) I considered each to be
obvious to *me* at least - since I was the one who thought of them.

Enjoy,
DoN.

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:19:06 GMT, BobH
wrote:


I would have been fine with defending the patent if I had any connection
to the litigants. That was the obligation I thought I was signing up for
when I filed the disclosure. As it was, both companies were operations
that I have very low regard for and unrelated to the company that I
filed the disclosure to.

Oh! I never encountered such a situation. It seems logical that
they'd want to fairly compensate you for your time if they really want
your willing help and counsel ... but lawyers do have their own
peculiar sort of logic.

In my case, such activities were just another work assignment and part
of the job.


You picked a good time to retire. Engineering has changed markedly in
the last decade.

I've had many people tell me that. I still occasionally see some of
the good people I worked with. I'm very glad I was able to bug out
when I did. I'd certainly be better off financially if I'd worked
another 8 years to age 65, but I've never once regretted retiring when
I did. All ya need is "enough", right?

Larry Jaques wrote:
On 26 Sep 2008 04:38:39 GMT, the infamous (Curt Welch)
scrawled the following:

"Tom Gardner" wrote:
I'm seeing previews for the movie about the invention of intermittent
wipers in '63. Think how things have changed in 45 years. Today, a
manager at a design firm would tell a group of engineers to design
such a system and have several designs on his desk by the end of the
day. True, they didn't have 555s in '63. So, is it that a unique
idea is a lot more important than the actual design?

If you remember some of my previous posts about nurturing ideas that
lead to designs, this has been an area of extreme interest to me. In
the movie, it looks like Ford screws the idea/design guy, which makes
me sick. Designers and model builders need more respect but idea guys
need to be revered! (coming from a guy that has had very, very few, if
any, original ideas)

I remember hearing about how the guy who invented intermediate wipers
got screwed by the auto companies maybe 20 or 30 years ago. My reaction
then, and pretty much my reaction now is - any idiot could have thought
that one up.

How's the air up there, Curt? Pretty thin?

Whey I see something like that, my thought is that this "inventor" was
no inventor at all. He had one idea in his life, and expected to get
rich from it. Real inventors create 10 ideas a day better than that
one. Yes, some people are much better than others at creating good
original ideas, but what's hard, is finding the one which is practical
at the time you find it, and which isn't so obvious that 10 other guys
didn't think it up at the same time. Dreaming up new ideas is easy.
Finding new solutions which are practical is not so easy. That requires
a lot of research and investigation to understand what will be needed,
and at which point in time it will become practical. And then creating
a design that works, and is affordable for the application.

So, what petty idea was stolen from you to get you so vitriolic?

I've invented 100's of things in my life. It's what most good engineers do
just as part of their job. Nothing has been stolen from me.

At the same time this guy made the invention of his life - a timer to
control a motor, real inventors and creative engineers were at work
creating the SR-71 blackbird - something so advance and creative it
probably included a 1000 items more noteworthy than this timer, and none
of the engineers creating all those inventions every day expected to get
anything in return except another day's pay.

True, with the type of contracts they have to sign to get work
nowadays. That's truly sad, too. The better companies share the
wealth and/or fame with their more inspired workers. THAT is the way
it should be, at least in most instances.

Now maybe there's more to this story and I'd like to see the movie to
find out. But mostly, I think the inventor probably had a greatly over
inflated ego. I don't doubt the auto companies ripped him off, but I
also don't think he deserved much more than about a day's pay for his
"invention" (from what I understand of it).

I haven't yet seen the movie, but to hear you rant like this without
having seen it is quite interesting. Tell us the real story behind
your acrid response, sir.

It's not the movie I'm ranting about. It's the idea that something so
trivial would be given so much attention and that the guy who says he
"invented it" felt he deserved so much for so little.

However, I just saw a longer trailer for the movie today which implied all
the auto companies were "working on the problem" at the time, and this guy
came up with some unique solution. I really don't have the faintest idea
why this was a hard problem to solve, but maybe there was something to it I
just don't yet know. Even without power electronics to control the motor
you just activate each cycle with a relay that included an R/C delay
circuit and a transitor to drive the relay. If the transistor wasn't
viable because of cost or reliability in 1962, use a small timer motor
which has cam closing the contacts to activate each cycle. This is trivial
stuff for 1960.

The idea that the such a device would be useful is likewise trivial. When
you find yourself having to turn the wipers on and off every few seconds
because of a light drizzle, it becomes obvious almost instantly to any good
inventor that the car should be turning it on and off for you. The only
question about this invention (which is the real question about 99% of all
inventions) is at which point does the market develop for it. That is,
when does it become cheap enough, and reliable enough, that the customer
will be willing to pay what it costs to be included? But that is not an
engineering question, it's just standard marketing question answered by a
little bit of insight combined with market research. It's just normal day
to day engineering and development work.

There are engineering ideas that are once in a life time types of
inventions that deserve special attention and wealth to the creator. And
maybe, there is something about this guy's solution that deserves such
attention. I just don't see it yet. I will no doubt see the move when it
comes out (I see most the big movies) so I'll find out if if there is
something I'm failing to understand when I see it.

I think mostly, the movie is just an attempt to leverage the appeal of
the old theme of "little guy being screwed by large corporation and
standing up for himself" angle. I only wish it was over something more
significant than the "invention" of interment windshield wipers.

Just -try- to tell me that you've never used them, Curt.

I use them all the time. They are extremely useful. But it wasn't a big
invention that resulted from a stroke of genus. They come under the
classification of stuff I consider obvious. I'm not sure (it was a long
time ago and I was in grade school), but I'm fairly sure it's one of the
millions of things I thought up before I heard they existed. It's just
obvious engineering.

Some things that I didn't think up and which are really cool, include the
invention of the www. I was working in that area, and knew about all the
issues, and problems, but yet, the particular combination of a text server
with embedded hyper link tags in the pages to allow for embedded click-able
links in the pages was a stroke of genus. I'd played with the Mac
hypercard application, and I'd used ftp servers and gopher and the like to
find data on the internet. And I even personally owned a NeXT at the time
the www was invented on a NeXT and I had written internet server
applications. But it never occurred to me to put those technologies
together in that combination. But, it was one of those things that 30
seconds after looking at it, you instantly knew you are looking at
something that is going to change the world.

There are many inventions like that which are just so much thinking out of
the box, and so cool, and so simple, and so powerful, that the person who
first creates it deserves to have their name go down in history. But
interment windshield wipers aren't one of those. They are a weeks worth of
work for any junior engineer.

If there is something behind this story which irritates me, it's the patent
system and intellectual property rights in general. I think it's good that
a company can invest big R&D dollars and feel safe in being able to recoup
their investment with the help of intellectual property laws preventing
other combines from copying there ideas and profiting from the research
they didn't pay for. But what irritates me, are the squatters who take
advantage of the system by simply patenting every obvious idea they can
dream up, 5 years before the obvious idea becomes practical in the market
place. So when the market develops to the point that it's time to do the
weeks worth of engineering to put that interment feature on the wipers, you
find some idiot filled a patent for the obvious idea 5 years ago and now he
thinks you should pay in 10 million dollars for this "invention". In fact,
he didn't invent anything and invested almost nothing in his R&D effort. He
was just an intellectual property speculator.

I have to wonder if the true story about this math teacher who "invented"
the "interment wiper" was just someone who thought he had invented
something big, when in fact he hadn't done anything substantial at all, and
was ignored by the auto industry because of the fact they didn't think he
had done anything worthy of reward. But then, using intellectual property
law, he forced their hand and made them pay out just to keep from looking
like the big bad auto industry had "stolen" this guy's "great idea".

But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe his solution wasn't obvious and was a great
idea. I'm looking forward to finding out more when the movie comes out.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

On 29 Sep 2008 00:20:42 GMT, the infamous (Curt Welch)
scrawled the following:

--big snips throughout--

So, what petty idea was stolen from you to get you so vitriolic?

I've invented 100's of things in my life. It's what most good engineers do
just as part of their job. Nothing has been stolen from me.

Ah, that says a lot. You have a totally different mindset than he did.
My grandfather was more like you, in that he gave his idea for a
specialized ophthalmoscope to the AOA and didn't want anything for it.


There are engineering ideas that are once in a life time types of
inventions that deserve special attention and wealth to the creator. And
maybe, there is something about this guy's solution that deserves such
attention. I just don't see it yet. I will no doubt see the move when it
comes out (I see most the big movies) so I'll find out if if there is
something I'm failing to understand when I see it.

I see that I tend to give more sway to the inventors than you do.
shrug I'll see the movie, too.


Just -try- to tell me that you've never used them, Curt.

I use them all the time. They are extremely useful. But it wasn't a big
invention that resulted from a stroke of genus. They come under the
classification of stuff I consider obvious. I'm not sure (it was a long
time ago and I was in grade school), but I'm fairly sure it's one of the
millions of things I thought up before I heard they existed. It's just
obvious engineering.

It wasn't at the time, and nobody had exploited their ideas into a
product. Why isn't that "extremely useful" product worth a patent to
you? Interesting.


If there is something behind this story which irritates me, it's the patent
system and intellectual property rights in general. I think it's good that
a company can invest big R&D dollars and feel safe in being able to recoup
their investment with the help of intellectual property laws preventing
other combines from copying there ideas and profiting from the research
they didn't pay for. But what irritates me, are the squatters who take
advantage of the system by simply patenting every obvious idea they can
dream up, 5 years before the obvious idea becomes practical in the market
place. So when the market develops to the point that it's time to do the
weeks worth of engineering to put that interment feature on the wipers, you
find some idiot filled a patent for the obvious idea 5 years ago and now he
thinks you should pay in 10 million dollars for this "invention". In fact,
he didn't invent anything and invested almost nothing in his R&D effort. He
was just an intellectual property speculator.

Yeah, the patent world is absolutely nuts right now. Whatta crock!


I have to wonder if the true story about this math teacher who "invented"
the "interment wiper" was just someone who thought he had invented

"Interment"?!? It wipes the dead bodies or something? vbg


something big, when in fact he hadn't done anything substantial at all, and
was ignored by the auto industry because of the fact they didn't think he
had done anything worthy of reward. But then, using intellectual property
law, he forced their hand and made them pay out just to keep from looking
like the big bad auto industry had "stolen" this guy's "great idea".

But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe his solution wasn't obvious and was a great
idea. I'm looking forward to finding out more when the movie comes out.

Ditto.

Ciao!

--
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Winston wrote:
Pete C. wrote:

Based on that existing knowledge, automating the intermittent function
would indeed be obvious and therefore a patent for such would be
invalid whether issued to an independent inventor or an automobile
manufacturer.

As useless as it was before, I now see that there is *no* reason
for a Patent Office, even for large companies. We can close it.

Until then, we can retroactively invalidate any patent claim
by simply saying "Well, I see it's just obvious that you would
invent this particular kind of assembly robot with these particular
features operated in this particular way."

Genius is recognizing the obvious before everyone else.
It should be rewarded.

--Winston

Yeah, I agree 100% with your statement about Genius. But I'm quickly
approaching the belief that the patent office and intellectual property
laws might be doing more damage than good in this age. Copyright and
trademark registration is fine, but when we try to patent inventions, the
claims start to become too abstract and to far reaching at which time the
patents stop working for us by protecting R&D investments and work against
us by creating nothing more than intellectual property squatters and
speculators trying to out guess the markets and benefit from a gamble that
has zero social value. If they are right, they get free money for making a
guess that has no benefit to society other than in making them richer. If
they are wrong they lose, but society also loses because resources are
wasted on registering patents that have no social value.

Most the payback companies receive from being the first to invent something
comes from the fact that they get to be first to market. No matter how
fast the competition is, there's always a delay as the competition reverse
engineers and tries to catch up which gives the guy first to market a short
term monopoly which is their reward for doing the research and for
investing their research dollars in the right place, at the right time.
First to market advantage alone with trade secrete production offers most
of the good of the patent system with zero overhead and cost and with none
of the bad side effects that the patent system creates. It's hard to
evaluate all the costs, but patents are looking questionable to me.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
spaco wrote:

Has anyone read that patent? I haven't. But many patents are issued
for their unique method of implementation, not necessarily the overall
idea. ----In other words, the feature that got the patent could have
been a non-obvious or super cheap(at the time) timer and switch
mechanism rather than the "idea" of intermittent wipers.
Guess I'll have to see the movie, too.

The patents are listed in the Wikipedia article on the inventor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

Use http://www.pat2pdf.org to obtain the patents.

Joe Gwinn

Well, I was not going to spend time actually doing the research to see what
the movie was about, but since you made it so damn easy, I had to look.

With a quick look, I see he was using transistors with an R/C circuit to
create the timer. Oh, yeah, no one would have thought of that.

In patent 3,351,836 (the first one listed in the Wikipedia article) figure
5 even has an error in it as far as I can see. The I and C contacts are
switched for the L/C timing circuit which drives the transistors and
creates the timing circuit. But that was just one of multiple examples and
the other examples seemed correct. (and maybe I'm wrong - I did only spend
2 minutes looking at it).

None of that is anything but obvious engineering work and as far as I can
tell, the entire patent dispute was a famous case debating exactly that -
i.e., where should the line be drawn between "obvious engineering" and
"original idea"?

It is clear from looking at the patent that he spent time doing the
engineering work and turning the idea into a workable design. But still,
it's just obvious engineering work and not anything like a "stroke of
genius" in my book. NO way in hell he deserved multiple billions of dollars
for what was probably only a few years of engineering work. He deserved to
be paid a salary for a few years of work if, and only if, he could find
someone willing to buy his work - which it seems he couldn't, in which case
he should have lost his entire investment for doing engineering work that
no on wanted at the time.

This is exactly the type of case in my book that shows we should shut the
patent system down.

Still, I bet it will be an interesting movie....

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

When was this? Before the 1964 patent or after?

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote:
My dad put intermittent and variable speed wipers on our 57 wagon.
It was named "Herbert". It had a toggle switch (mil spec) and
Potentiometer

He had to take that off and the vacuum tube Dwell toy for better millage.
And the radar dish on the front grill. speed detector on the radar gun.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/

Tom Gardner wrote:
I'm seeing previews for the movie about the invention of intermittent
wipers in '63. Think how things have changed in 45 years. Today, a
manager at a design firm would tell a group of engineers to design such
a system and have several designs on his desk by the end of the day.
True, they didn't have 555s in '63. So, is it that a unique idea is a
lot more important than the actual design?

If you remember some of my previous posts about nurturing ideas that
lead to designs, this has been an area of extreme interest to me. In
the movie, it looks like Ford screws the idea/design guy, which makes
me sick. Designers and model builders need more respect but idea guys
need to be revered! (coming from a guy that has had very, very few, if
any, original ideas)

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

Curt Welch wrote:
(...)

It's hard to evaluate all the costs, but patents are
looking questionable to me.

All a patent does is give one the right to sue an infringer.
It doesn't supply the team of lawyers or the awe-inspiring
bankroll or the decades of time necessary to mount a credible
challenge to a large corporation.

In my limited experience, large companies simply infringe
with impunity. Everyone in the legal community is well aware
who owns them so paying a lawyer for such is just an exercise
in futility.

I don't know which planet is structured so that the intellectual
property claimed by individuals is honored by *any* group.
It ain't this one.

Robert Kearns was fortunate to live in a kinder, simpler age
before large corporations changed their business model to
resemble that of La Cosa Nostra. Once upon a time, companies
actually were concerned about their public image.

Now you can tell where the loyal opposition used to be.

Just look for the smoking hole.


--Winston

On 29 Sep 2008 04:55:54 GMT, the infamous (Curt Welch)
scrawled the following:

None of that is anything but obvious engineering work

To _you_, _now_, sure. If it was so obvious, Curt, why didn't _you_
invent it back then?

How obvious was it back then? In the _automotive_ industry, not the
electronics industry?

Hindsight is 20/20. 'nuf said.

--
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Way before. We were overseas by 64. I woke up to JFK on the Shortwave.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/


Curt Welch wrote:
When was this? Before the 1964 patent or after?

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote:
My dad put intermittent and variable speed wipers on our 57 wagon.
It was named "Herbert". It had a toggle switch (mil spec) and
Potentiometer

He had to take that off and the vacuum tube Dwell toy for better millage.
And the radar dish on the front grill. speed detector on the radar gun.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/

Tom Gardner wrote:
I'm seeing previews for the movie about the invention of intermittent
wipers in '63. Think how things have changed in 45 years. Today, a
manager at a design firm would tell a group of engineers to design such
a system and have several designs on his desk by the end of the day.
True, they didn't have 555s in '63. So, is it that a unique idea is a
lot more important than the actual design?

If you remember some of my previous posts about nurturing ideas that
lead to designs, this has been an area of extreme interest to me. In
the movie, it looks like Ford screws the idea/design guy, which makes
me sick. Designers and model builders need more respect but idea guys
need to be revered! (coming from a guy that has had very, very few, if
any, original ideas)



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On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:04:51 -0400, clare at snyder dot ontario dot
canada wrote:


Hoewever, I think I had mine working about the same time - My Mini had
Lucas wipers and switches. Intermittent, but not totally predictable
(kinda like a FORD)
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
My Lumina APV started having intermittent everything at about thirteen
years of age (not a puberty thing), one of the problems of composite
body construction, ended up running a lot of ground wires.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada