It rains heavily in summer and winds and snows in winter. As an inconspicuous car accessory, the wiper blade had ensured the safe driving for car owners over one century in rainy and snowy etc weather and save countless lives. However, it did not exist since the birth of the car, it developed from nothing to birth. Today, I would like to talk about the history of wipers blade.
After the invention of the car, many accessories gradually appeared with the demand of use, and the wiper blade was one of them. In the 19th century, when there were no windshield wipers blades, drivers driving on rainy days was troublesome. In order to avoid the inconvenience of driving without wiper blades on rainy days, some people used a mixture of onions and carrots to smear the glass on the windshield, but the method was troublesome. The smell is heavy, the effect is not obvious, and people dislike it.
Therefore, without windshield wipers period, people move forward in the rainy and snowy days, and traffic accidents were frequent. It was until 1902 that a rich lady named Mary Anderson in Alabama in the United States invented the first real wiper blades. Its invention can also be said to be the result of an accident.
One day in 1902, Mary Anderson encountered heavy rains while attending a commercial event. The driver could not see the road ahead and had to get out of the car in the rain again and again with a rag to wipe the rain on the windshield. Mary was very anxious and scolded the driver to drive quickly. But just as the driver speed up and took a turn, he found a people by bike a rocketed out in the blur; When he could see him clearly, the driver hurriedly slammed the steering wheel, but it is too late to dodge, then hit a tree. Mary was injured on the accident and was forwarded to the hospital.
Mary dismembered that her father had died in a car accident due to a blurred windshield on a rainy day, this time she was injured and was forwarded to hospital again, and missed an important business opportunity. Mary wanted to solve this hateful problem. One time, she was inspired by the action of the girl close to the bed who was moved to tears when she received flowers from her boyfriend and kept wiping her tears with her handkerchief: If a controller can be installed on the windshield of the car to operate the rains like handkerchief, then the driver will be able to see the road on rainy days Just wipe by controller, isn’t it all right?
Mary was very excited about the idea. After she back from the hospital, she immediately started the research and invented a windshield wiper design, a year later, she designed a wiper blade and installed it in her car. The invention is very simple. It is to tie a sponge to a steel rod that is punched through the glass of the car. When driving on rainy days, the driver can turn the lever to wipe the rainwater with a sponge clinging to the glass. But this is very dangerous. When it rains, the driver can't see the front clearly. If he keeps turning the lever with his hands, he is more likely to be in danger.
So Mary continued to think about improving this device, and invented the rotating rod with a clockwork, so that the rain wiper can automatically wipe the rain many times after the last time. Later, she named this rain wiping device a wiper and applied for an invention patent. The description of this device in the patent specification is "window cleaning device". This earliest wiper device was used in many early models.
At about the same time, Irish inventor James Henry Apjohn also invented a wiper device that can clean the front windshield up and down, and applied for a patent in the United Kingdom. Since then, many inventors have applied for patents for their own wiper blade devices. Around 1910, a woman named Charlotte Bridgford invented the electric wiper, announcing that the wiper entered into the stage of technological exploration.
