2024-08-23 10:22:26
For a long time, Mary Anderson could not convince the manufacturers that they were working
At the beginning of the 20th century, the automobile industry began to develop rapidly, but one of the big problems it faced was keeping car windshields clean all the time in bad weather.
Windshield wipers as we know them today did not exist and drivers had to stop frequently to manually clear the windshield of rain, snow or dirt.
One cold winter morning in New York in 1902, Mary Anderson was traveling on a streetcar and noticed that
the driver constantly stops to brush the snow off the windshield
This constant problem led her to the idea of an invention that would allow drivers to clean the glass without having to stop. After returning home, she began working on the design of a device that would be simple but effective.
Mary Anderson designed a mechanism consisting of a rubber rod attached to a metal arm that moved along the windshield. This mechanism is operated by a lever from inside the vehicle. In 1903, she patented her invention under the name “mechanical cleaners”. Its idea is simple, but it has brought a revolution in the safety and comfort of drivers.
Despite the obvious advantages that cleaners brought, they were not received with great enthusiasm at first. Car companies and the public are skeptical. Many believe that wipers will only distract drivers.
Anderson had trouble convincing car manufacturers to incorporate her invention into their machines.
Anderson though
never fails to make money
of her invention because her patent expired in 1920 before she could convince any of the major automakers to use her idea.
Despite the initial difficulties, wipers gradually began to be installed in more and more cars. When it became clear that they did increase road safety, their popularity grew. Car manufacturers began to include wipers as standard equipment on their models. Mary Anderson’s invention proved to be an invaluable asset to drivers around the world.
In 1922, Cadillac became the first car manufacturer to introduce windshield wipers as standard equipment. However, they do not have an “irrigation system”.
The first vehicles fitted with wipers as well as windscreen washers as standard were the 1935 Triumph Gloria and Vitesse.
This is a vacuum controlled system and only closed versions of the car get such technology.
For those who bought the car without a roof, obviously
they were expected to simply submit their heads
over the top of the windshield to see the road.
When wipers were finally introduced to cars in the 1940s and 1950s, they still didn’t come with adjustments. You can turn them on. You can turn them off. That’s all.
In 1953, Robert Kearns of Detroit was celebrating his wedding when a champagne cork hit him in the left eye. His eyesight suffers and he struggles behind the wheel, especially when driving in the rain.
While researching his predicament scientifically, he noticed that our eyeballs have their own cleaners, the eyelids. However, we do not blink constantly to maintain clear vision, but rather every few seconds. Applying this idea to windshield wipers came to Kearns first.
In 1962, he fitted his intermittent wiper model to his own Ford Galaxy and drove it to Ford headquarters. The device so impressed the engineers,
that they had to kick him out of the garage,
to prove that he doesn’t activate and deactivate the wipers with a button in his pocket.
However, the company rejected Robert’s invention and ended up screwing him up by starting to produce the interval wipers 7 years later. It wasn’t until 1976 that Kearns took the popular mechanism apart to discover that his invention had been completely stolen.
After years of battling Ford, Chrysler, and 25 other automakers, in 1995.
Kearns ended up getting only $30 million
by Chrysler (rejected from his original $325 million claim) because he had fired his lawyers and tried to plead alone.
Kearns died on February 9, 2005 at the age of 77. And he was never fully recognized as the creator of the spaced wipers.