Each day I hop into my vehicle, start the engine, and drive away. If it is a warm day, I select to turn on the air conditioning or retract my convertible roof. On cool days I set the heat system, to make sure I am comfortable as I am driving. When it is raining, snowing or foggy I utilise my Wiper blades to clear the windscreen.

I never generally think of how these things evolved for my comfort, I just take it for granted that vehicles have these facilities to improve my driving experience. However, as winter nears, it led me to think about the Windscreen wipers and what a amazing invention they are.

I have searched for information on this subject and found that in 1903, when the first windshields were added to automobiles, an inventor by the name of J H Apjohn came up with the idea of Windscreen wipers in the form of brushes which swept up and down the windscreen to clear it. I would think that the brushes almost certainly caused quite a few scratches to the windscreen, so in 1905, when the American inventor, Mary Anderson, patented the swinging arm style of windscreen wiper, with a rubber blade, this must have been enthusiastically accepted by the automotive industry.

These early Windscreen wipers required the driver to move a lever in the car to work the wipers, so the next large step was towards electric Windscreen wipers. A dentist from Hawaii, Dr Ormand Wall, invented the electric wipers in 1917, some 12 years after Mary Anderson’s first Wiper Blades were added to vehicles.

All Windscreen wipers had rubber blades until relatively recently. The troubles found with these were that owing to changes in temperature, heat in summer, icy winters, the rubber rotted and the Wiper blades required replacement in a fairly quick time period.

Silicone wiper blades are now also offered and these are less at risk from temperature changes than their rubber predecessors. Even though the Silicone wiper blades are a little more pricey than the rubber Windscreen wipers, they often come with a guarantee to not rot or split, as occurs with the rubber wipers, and also allege to be able to follow the contours of the windscreen better, giving a cleaner sweep.

We request a lot from these amazing little inventions. I expect to push or pull or twist at a stick on my driving wheel and get an instant effect from the Wiper blades. They are required to clean dirt and bugs from my windscreen in the summer. When the roads are grimy, I want the filth to be cleared from my windscreen straight away, to give me good vision. If it is icy first thing in the day, I turn on the heater and impatiently switch the Windscreen wipers on to clear the screen fast. In winter the thick snow is shown short shrift.

Because of the above I am thankful to the ingenious Mary Anderson, the inventor of Windscreen wipers.I also marvel at the type of mind that could come up with such an invention out of just being faced with a problem. It’s a lesson to us all when we’re facing adversity.

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Automotive