As a young man forced to quit art school when his stepmother locked him out of the house for dallying with a female student, thus missing the 11 PM curfew his father had imposed while absent on business, my career as a designer ended before it started. Yet like most young guys I wasn't easily dissuaded so I tried selling concepts to anyone who'd listen. One who paid attention was John McKenny Bingham, president of his own ad agency. Mr. Bingham was impressed by my design for an automobile trunk lid. By today's standards it may seem silly but that was before the days of hatchbacks and minivans, when buyers were limited by the carrying capacity of conventional automobile trunks. My trunk lid was hinged, not only from the top. but from the bottom. When opened, a pair of side panels swung into place creating, in effect, a trunk similar to a pickup bed. Mr. Bingham paid for temporary patent protection, then approached the Detroit manufacturers. Their response? "We do not accept submissions from outsiders in order to avoid legal complications if we should be pursuing similar ideas." Fast forward to Flash of Genius, a new movie starring Greg Kinnear with Alan Alda. Dr. Richard Kearns invented the intermittent windshield wiper and then (so he thought) sold the concept to the Ford Motor Company. His intermittent windshield wiper was far more lasting and important than the Powell "reverse trunk lid" but the movie reminded me of how difficult it can be to sell an invention to a major corporation. And what might have happened if we'd succeeded. This is a car movie worth seeing.
[Image: Universal Pictures]