Side-View Mirror Turn Signal Inventor Keith Taylor's Sad Tale

[Bozita]

The teevee station will be posting the video soon.

I seem to recall a similar story about the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers.


Turn Signal Inventor Keith Taylor's Sad Tale
Updated: Tuesday, 18 Jan 2011, 10:04 PM EST
Published : Tuesday, 18 Jan 2011, 10:01 PM EST
By CHARLIE LEDUFF
WJBK | myFOXDetroit.com


The old saying goes that genius is one-percent inspiration and 99-percent perspiration. However, one Detroit inventor now realizes he should have spent at least five-percent on a good lawyer.

This is the story of a sweet, simple man on a dead end street caught between an airport and a cemetery. Here you either fly far away or you're buried, and Keith Taylor thought he had his ticket stamped.

FOX 2's Charlie LeDuff asked Taylor if he thought it would end up this way.

"Not in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen to me. If you told me this five years ago, I wouldn't believe it," he replied.

Back in the late eighties, a light bulb went off in Taylor's exquisite, unknown mind.


"I'm just a regular guy. The difference in me and inventions is I act on them instead of saying somebody should do that," Taylor said.

In his basement, the pastor's son invented the illuminated turn signal mirror.

A long and sad story made short, he patented his invention and crawled into bed with a supplier. He got paid, and he got out.

LeDuff asked Taylor how much he got paid.

"Around a hundred grand," he answered. "I bought a house for my mother in Troy."

more...

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/turn-signal-inventor-keith-taylor-sad-tale-20110118-wpms

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. There's a great movie about the intermittent wiper guy

with Greg Kinear.

[Bozita]

2. The Prince family (think Blackwater) did rather nicely with lighted vanity mirrors.

[gateley]

3. Jesus. Why am I not surprised? Yet another reason to despise them.

[uncle ray]

4. i wonder how much in royalties he paid the inventor of the side view mirror,

or the inventor of the turn signal, or any of the other patent holders whose inventions he expanded upon. i'm guessing a big fat goose egg. he's lucky he got the hundred grand in the first place. the guy is delusional if he thinks he should be a billionaire for inventing mirror turn signals.