杏吧原创

A PATENT dispute over the intermittent windshield wiper may not sound like ideal fodder for a major motion picture. But , opening next month in the US, will be worth seeing if it tells the story of inventor Robert Kearns as well as John Seabrook does in the title story of his from The New Yorker.

Driving in the rain in 1962, Kearns realised the wipers should be more like his eyelids: sweeping across the glass 鈥� and obscuring his view 鈥� only occasionally. He patented his design for these 鈥渂linking eye wipers鈥� and soon after the Ford motor company became interested in them. One day, though, the company stopped returning his calls.

Fourteen years later, Kearns took apart a Mercedes wiper and found that it used his design. He soon discovered that all other major auto makers did too, and he launched a series of David-versus-Goliath legal battles that lasted more than two decades. Although he was offered, and later awarded, tens of millions of dollars, Kearns was interested only in receiving recognition for his flash of genius on that rainy ride.

The other tales in the book are likewise about inspiration and genius, but not the kind exhibited by a Mozart or an Einstein. Seabrook鈥檚 choice of genius is of a more accessible kind 鈥� that sudden insight that allows a smart but essentially normal person to overturn the status quo and change even one small corner of the world. When you look at it that way, we can all hope to experience a flash of genius first-hand, even first person.

鈥淲e can all hope to experience a flash of genius first hand鈥�

Alongside Kearns we meet the geologist who, after years of unremarkable prospecting, realised that seemingly worthless rocks contained microscopic grains of 鈥渋nvisible gold鈥�; the investment-banker-turned-junkie who reinvented himself as the 鈥渇ruit detective鈥�, tracking down obscure or forgotten varieties of fruit to bring to the public; and the museum curator who realised a corroded nest of bronze gears from ancient Greece was once a computer that calculated the motions of the planets.

Like all collections from publications that trade on timeliness, some material feels dated. Kearns鈥檚 tale ends in 1993 and would have benefited from an epilogue bringing it up to date. On the whole, though, timing doesn鈥檛 matter too much, because characters, not events are at the heart of Seabrook鈥檚 excellent writing. Even the technical details of the ideas and inventions come second, almost incidental to his first-person explorations of the people imbued with or affected by the inspiration.

For all that, fits in a surprising amount of technical detail. You鈥檒l learn, for instance, how to recover scrap metal or design skyscrapers that won鈥檛 topple over. But, true to Seabrook鈥檚 real interests, the real lesson of this book is a human one: flashes of genius, no matter how small, can come from anywhere and perhaps anyone.