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Bob
Kearns has spent most of his life fighting for inventors
right to exclude others from using the inventor's
invention.
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EXPERIENCE:
1994 - November - Elected to a five year term as a member
of the Board of Directors of the Veterans of the Office
of Strategic Services ("O.S.S.") and (O.S.S.
General) William J. Donovan Memorial Fund
1995 - Elected to six year term as a member of the Board
of Directors —
Historical Society of Queen Anne's County, Maryland.
1977 - Present
Litigant: Kearns v. [Auto Industry]
ITT/SWF v. Kearns
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
- Southern Division
1975 - 1977
Litigant: Kearns v. Tann Company
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
- Southern Division
1963 - 1976
Professional Engineer: Kearns Engineers
I developed a series of products for my own manufacture:
Intermittent Windshield Wiper Systems with
driver-adjusted pause time between successive wiping
cycles.
"Safety-skip" Intermittent Windshield Wiper
Systems with driver-adjusted pause time between
successive wiping cycles, weather conditions safely
permitting, otherwise, the pause time was automatically
skipped between wiping cycles when the moisture
accumulating in the viewing area of the windshield during
a fixed sample-time exceeded a threshold
degree-of-dryness. [Note: No moisture sensor is used in
the system.] {Demonstrated to Ford in 1965.}
"Safety-skip" Intermittent Windshield Wiper
Systems with the improvement that the pause time is
automatically adjusted, proportional to the degree-of
dryness, when the moisture accumulating was below the
"safety-skip" threshold value. When the viewing
area sample is dry, the pause time is a long-time
maximum. When the viewing area sample is moderate, the
pause time is moderate. When the viewing area sample is
nearly obstructing vision, the pause time is short, and,
when the sample is obstructing vision, the pause time is
skipped altogether. [Note: No moisture sensor is used in
the system.] {Demonstrated to Ford in early 1966.}
An active Highway Safety Sign that is adjustable to
particular sections of pavement. It automatically flashes
alerts to a driver of the reduced
degree-of-pavement-skid-resistance then present on that
particular section of pavement due to the present
wet-weather conditions.
An active Highway Safety Sign that is adjustable to a
particular bridge section. It automatically flashes
alerts to a driver of the freezing conditions on that
particular bridge before and after the pavement on the
approach to the bridge is icing, frozen and/or slippery.
A series of D-C Motor Speed Controls.
A series of unique control components named, Digital
Difference to Analog Converters, [they maintain a
resolution of one part in ten million] that facilitate
the closed-loop control of automatic analog-drive control
systems following digital controlled-variable commands.
A Digital Parallel Adder - of, for example, two ten-bit
numbers, that utilizes no internal "carries",
and forms a sum and output carry in three pieces of time.
[For comparison, two ten-bit numbers require, at least,
ten pieces of time for the carries to be formed and
transferred from column to column to form the sum and
output carry in a serial adder.]
Gating Circuitry for implementing Boolean expressions
which is much faster, and utilizes less power than
conventional And, Or and Not gate digital circuitry.
[Note: With the addition of Memory, the Gating Circuitry
plus Parallel Adder form the basic requirements of an
unique computer.]
I developed, manufactured and then sold, through national
advertising, under my other company name and U.S.
trademark Computer Central, the products described below
until I suffered an emotional breakdown over the
infringement of my Intermittent Windshield Wiper U.S.
Patents.
1965 - 1976
Manufacturer: Computer Central* (U.S. Trademark)
Manufactured a series of control components:
Linear Range Comparator
Sign or Equality Binary Comparator
Identity Comparator
Dual Brush V-Scan Encoder Electronics
Gray Code to Binary Code Encoder Electronics
Digital Difference to Analog Converters
A partial list of customers for these products includes:
[See Kearns v. Wood Motors, Inc.: Response to Int. No. 6]
Beckman Instruments, Inc.
Case-Western Reserve University
Cross Company - Entrekin Computers Division
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Lincoln Labs.
3M Company
National Bureau of Standards
National Cash Register Company
United Technology - Hamilton Standard Division
Chitose Corporation, Japan
1971 - 1976
Mechanical Engineer-Principal Investigator-Skid
Resistance
Measurement of Pavements under Wet-Weather Conditions
National Bureau of Standards
Department of Engineering Mechanics
(now the National Institute of Science and Technology)
Gaithersburg, Maryland
As principal investigator, I implemented a Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA) desire to establish a
hierarchial program for standardization of the skid
resistance measurement of pavements under simulated wet
weather conditions. The activity was part of the FHWA
skid accident reduction program.
A National Reference System (NRS) (similar in appearance
to Exhibit E) was developed by identifying sources of
error in the measurements then being made by FHWA;
designing sub-systems to measure the quantities involved,
or, improving the test procedures to control the
appropriate variables. The NRS test measurements were
made automatically, converted to digital code and stored
on-board in an integrated circuit transistorized memory.
These data were then transferred to a mini-computer
ground station thru an umbilical cable where these data
were reduced and plotted automatically. The ground
station results exhibited greater resolution than
achieved heretofore and minimized the differences due to
the judgment required by different data analysts.
The NRS is maintained and operated by the National Bureau
of Standards. Area reference systems (ARS) are now (1976)
operated at three regional FHWA field test centers. The
skid resistance measurements systems operated by the
states are adjusted and correlated with the ARS at the
field test centers in the hierarchial program.
I designed the improved digital instrumentation of the
NRS as well as the test equipment required by the test
procedures. John F. Ward and I developed the test
procedures to measure, adjust and intercompare the
performance of the sub-systems and the test program to
correlate the overall measurement results between the ARS
and the NRS.
Certain of these test procedures are now (1976) standard
methods of test in the American Society of Testing and
Materials (ASTM) procedures.
1967 - 1971
Commissioner
Department of Buildings & Safety Engineering
City of Detroit
Michigan
As Commissioner, I served under two Mayors and lead 460
persons including 22 professional engineers and 300
journeyman inspectors in carrying out the duties of the
attached chart. [See Exhibit F.] In addition, I
participated in the "negotiations" concerning
salary and benefits with seven journeyman unions.
The annual budget was $5,000,000. The value of
construction supervised approached $200,000,000 annually.
My stewardship entailed efficient administration,
professional engineering activities and innovative
planning.
When I took office (shortly after the Detroit
race-riots), the departments budget was $2.7 million and
required 23% of the budget, ($621,000), to come from tax
funds although the City Charter required the Department
to be revenue supported. While services were increased
and the annual budget increased 85%, the funds required
from taxes were reduced to 8% ($400,000) a 35% reduction
of tax revenue requirements. This reduction required
identifying the financial leaks, making appropriate
changes in the operations, and converting non-revenue
complaint inspections into systematic revenue producing
activities which obviated the need for many complaints.
I suggested to Mayor Cavanagh that the Department absorb
the activities of the Police General License Bureau.
Thirty officers were released for patrol work with the
licensing activity being done by 13 civil servants. The
difference in fringe benefits alone amounts to $3,000 per
officer per year, ($90,000), for a savings of $250,000
each year into the future.
In the professional engineering category, I introduced
(through a Professor of Civil Engineering at Wayne State
University) the use of simultaneous structural
engineering equations, solved by computer, into the
Department's analyses of proposed, new buildings. The
Blue Cross building (24 stories, $32 million) and the new
addition to the Trade Center (18 stories) were the first
structures analyzed by Department personnel using a
computer.
In the innovative planning category, upon taking office I
learned the Department inspections in only 6,000 of the
city's 350,000 buildings. I established the Bureau of
Maintenance which helped to increase our inspections to
13,000 multiple dwellings, which reduced the load of
complaint calls, while still conducting systematic
concentrated inspections in selected areas of the city
under the Federal workable program.
Further, I launched a very successful program of special
inspections of used homes made at mortgage closing time
for the FHA & VA. Our traditional inspectors
functioned within their respective specialties yet
contributed to the preservation of the cities existing
housing stock ... and on a revenue supported bases.
Income, in 1971, was at a $280,000 annual rate for the
19,000 additional inspections being made under this
program.
I enforced a Council resolution against
"cracker-box" designs and achieved single
family detached housing which was compatible in design
with its proposed neighborhood. [Now (1990) I see a
resolution may not have been sufficient authority.] Under
this program Detroit built its first two-story brick
homes in many years while increasing our annual
production by a factor of three.
Supervisors: Mayors: Jerome P. Cavanagh; and Roman S.
Gribbs.
I was appointed by Governor George Romney in 1968 &
Governor William Milliken in 1970 to the Governor's
Special Commission on Housing Law Revision. [See Exhibit
F.]
1967 - 1969
Wayne County Supervisor
I was a Supervisor on the Board of Supervisors of Wayne
County Michigan. We were responsible for all the
legislative activities of the County government.
1965 - 1967 Kearns Engineers
"Analysis of the Driveline System" (clutch
chatter)
P.O. 47-X-78229-FP to Kearns Engineers
The men who authorized the work are:
Mr. B.T. Howes, Manager
Advanced Climate Control and
Power Trains Installation
Mr. C.L. Knighton, Manager
Power Trains Installation
Mr. O.D. Dillmaan, Executive Engineer
Chassis Design
Car Product Engineering Office
1963 - 1967
Associate Professor of Engineering - Wayne State Univ.
1957 - 1963
Assistant Professor of Engineering - Wayne State Univ.
Department of Engineering Mechanics
Professor Lissner, the Department Chairman, had
supervised my Master's Thesis (U.S. Patent 2,959,347),
liked what I had done, knew of my desire to start an
engineering design & build facility and invited me to
"choose your own hours"; "look upon Wayne
as your first client"; and, join the Department as
an Assistant Professor -- which I did.
I usually took the 8 & 9 a.m. classes to teach
undergraduates and returned to Wayne in the evening, 6:20
to 9:00 p.m. to teach graduate students. Since I liked to
build, and would pick up a soldering-iron, I was on many
Master's and Ph.D. candidates committees. I believe my
instrumentation, control and electrical background was
very helpful to these mechanics students. I was granted
tenure, at the age of 33, by the University Board of
Governors in Sept., 1960. [See Exhibit G.]
Courses Taught:
Course Number Title
E.M. 0310 Statics
E.M. 0320 Dynamics
E.M. 0330 Fluid Mechanics
E.M. 0340 Mechanics of Materials
E.M. 0341 Materials Testing Laboratory
E.M. 0522 Advanced Dynamics
E.M. 0530 Intermediate Fluid Mechanics
E.M. 0581 Industrial Applications of Industrial Isotopes
E.M. 0583 Reactor Theory and Operation I
E.M. 0720 Advanced Dynamics II
E.M. 0785 Control & Kinetics of Nuclear Reactors
Supervisor: Herbert R. Lissner, Chairman
Department of Engineering Mechanics
1957 - 1962
Partner, Kearns & Law
When an engineering office was established, I was joined
by Kenneth J. Law who also became an Assistant Professor
at Wayne State University. With money to support our
families assured from our salaries at Wayne, any
engineering office income could be used to support our
employees. We became a Michigan partnership, Kearns &
Law, in 1957.
Examples of our design and build contracts [See Exhibit
H] include:
A power supply unit for a Bendix instrumentation system
for a satellite launched by Chrysler Missile. The power
supply system Kearns & Law designed and built passed
the environmental tests conducted by Chrysler.
Kearns and Law assembled the instrumentation control
console for the University of Michigan nuclear reactor.
Kearns & Law, built Wuerth Surgistors for the
inventor and shipped them directly to a variety of
television manufacturers in lots of 25,000 and 100,000.
The Surgistors were installed in TV sets, so the heating
elements of vacuum tubes would be initially powered at
half rating to extend the life of the vacuum tubes.
For Curtiss-Wright and the U.S. Marine Corps, Kearns
& Law designed and built improved power supplies for
the radios used by Marines in the Arctic regions. We were
told that Marines would die, within as little as forty
feet of safe havens, when their radio power supplies
would fail in blinding weather. Kearns & Law power
supplies passed the environmental tests required.
Kearns & Law designed fixtures and instrumentation to
detect, at high production rates, flaws present inside
drill bits without touching the bits.
We began in an office on Seven Mile Road in Detroit,
expanded to an office with shop in Livonia, and, in a
later expansion in 1961, returned to Detroit on Eight
Mile Road.
After I accepted the National Science Fellowship in 1961,
I traveled to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to
study each day, and kept up my work at Kearns & Law
each day as well. My classmates were majors and
lieutenant colonels who established an exam class average
of 93 percent. I couldn't do well at both. So, I left my
money and facilities in the business with Ken, accepted
$1 per hour for all my effort over the previous four
years, to be paid by Ken at a small amount each month,
and moved my family to Cleveland, Ohio where I began
studying in 1962 at Case Institute of Technology.
Upon completing my studies for the Ph.D. degree, I
returned to Wayne State University to teach for three
more years as I had promised, and until, Mayor Cavanagh
said it was my duty to accept the position of
Commissioner of the Department of Buildings & Safety
Engineering for the City of Detroit.
1953 - 1957
Engineer
Bendix Aviation Corporation
Research Laboratories Division
Southfield, Michigan
The duties of this position included the supervision and
direction of a group of engineers responsible for the
design of computer components, servomechanisms, control
systems and related devices. Other duties included
planning, liaison with other Bendix divisions,
establishing test equipment requirements, as well as
technical specifications and reports.
In February, 1955, I became engineering group leader
responsible for the supervision of the design and
development of telemetry conversion equipment for a
series of research and development missile flight tests.
This activity was one phase of a project which included
the research, design, development, and flight analysis of
a flight control system Bendix incorporated in the
Crossbow Missile, a major weapons system. The telemetry
engineering group leaders duties included establishing
the control ranges of measurement, the sensitivity to be
utilized, in addition to selection of the continuous
sub-carrier frequencies and commutation sampling rates to
provide satisfactory information capacity and channel
frequency response.
The primary function of the telemetry conversion
equipment was to convert missile flight control system
signal and power supply voltages into proportional d-c
signals for inputs to a standard Bendix FM/FM telemetry
system which would be suitable for missile flight
performance and failure analyses. The secondary function
of this equipment was to provide a means of conveying
converted system signal and power voltages to the
Crossbow missile carrier aircraft prior to missile
launch, or, during captive flight, to monitoring and/or
recording facilities aboard the missile carrier aircraft.
In January, 1953, I was one of three engineers assigned
the development of a production prototype shipboard wind
computer as part of a shipboard integrated meteorological
system. It was designed to operate under all conditions
associated with Navy ships, and was tested on an aircraft
carrier operating in the Caribbean Sea. It is capable of
supplying information concerning the absolute speed,
direction, altitude and time since launch of a balloon
being tracked by radar and propelled by winds aloft. It
is an analog computer, which performs automatically the
trigonometry involved by means of servomechanisms with
electronic circuitry. We were responsible for the design,
construction, laboratory testing and environmental
testing of the computer. A publications engineer and I
wrote the operations manual.
Supervisor: Mr. Charles M. Edwards
Head, Computer Department
July, 1952 to
January, 1953
Junior Engineer
Burroughs Research Laboratories
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Initially, I wrote a library research paper concerning
the design of read-write heads for magnetic drum memories
of digital computers. Later, I performed experiments
concerning the application of iron-oxide coatings on
these drums.
Supervisor: Mr. Alex Bielski
Electromechanical Department
March, 1952 to
July, 1952
Designer (Draftsman)
Peerless Design Company
Detroit, Michigan
I designed tools & dies and supervised the detailing
of each part of the design.
1949 - 1952
Engineer-in-Training
National Bureau of Standards
Department of Engineering Mechanics
Washington, D.C.
Under the University of Detroit Cooperative Program
Initially, I was responsible for executing a variety of
standardized tests on engineering materials. Later, I
participated in the testing of larger and more complex
structures, some requiring the use of as many as 200
electrical strain gages. Still later, I designed test
equipment and conducted research, under direction,
concerning the dynamic strain properties of materials.
Supervisors: William Campbell
& Sam Levy
Sept. 1946 to
Sept. 1947
Detailer (Draftsman)
H & A Tool and Die Company
Detroit, Michigan
Initially, I prepared complete engineering shop drawings
for the manufacture of the individual parts of special
machinery and dies. Later, my duties included ordering
material, suggesting shop scheduling and follow-up for
the manufacture of the individual parts of the special
machines, and, maintaining simplified payroll and cost
accounting records for the firm.
Supervisor: Mr. Albert Burke, Chief Engineer
6/43 to 9/43
6/44 to 9/44
6/45 to 7/45
and other vacation periods thru 1951
Mercury Engineering Company
Detroit, Michigan
Detailer (Draftsman)
I prepared complete engineering shop drawings for the
manufacture of the individual parts comprising tools,
jigs, fixtures and dies.
Supervisors: John Leutchmann
& Larry Klosterman
Read about why I, Ronald J Riley,
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