All the way back as far as nineteen hundred and three the concept of the wiper blades would have been entirely alien to most, but not so to an audacious young inventor by the name of Ms Mary Anderson. This brave young girl took it upon herself to alter the world and minds of men by being the inventor of an apparatus which would one day come to control the majority world of motor cars. Back then before she came onto the scene the thought that rain could be driven from a viewing window had not even occurred to any one despite the large sum of accidents caused by this lack of visibility. It was fundamentally something which nearly all drivers had unconsciously accepted as ok and to take the inherent risks with a pinch of salt. Before wiper blades the standard method of cleaning a wind screen was to put your hand out of the window and wipe it from there or stop, get out and then proceed to clear the wind screen. Neither of these methods was very effective in fact before the wiper blades was made the number of accidents on the roads and byways were substantial. The idea to produce such a great and noble device came to the erstwhile Ms Mary Anderson one day upon a aquaintance to the large city of New York and upon observing the tram drivers putting their hands out of the windows in order to wipe the wind screen. On the way back home to her native Alabama it became obvious to her that this way simply wouldn’t do and that a appliance or wiper blades utilising twin brushes could be adopted to clear the wind screen by way of a hand crank mechanism.

The next year in nineteen hundred and four Ms Anderson had already had the blueprint of the new wipers appliance patented and this time it was made of rubber. The wipers was attached to a spring loaded arm which dragged the wipers over the wind screen when actuated by a handle located inside the cab.

Although many before her had attempted to solve this perplexing issue hers was the first idea which was actually reasonable and more significantly actually worked well. This was all at a time when vehicles were still reasonably rare on the open roads and people ignorance of road rules was at an all time high. In fact, poor Ms Anderson was quite severely attacked for her revolutionary new device claiming such things as the windscreen wipers appliance would annoy the driver and cause more accidents than it avoids. Such remarks were ill founded however and over time Ms Anderson’s appliance would go on to conquer the world. With the help of a man named Henry Ford the vehicle or horseless carriage would soon be produced in large numbers and by nineteen hundred and fifteen the windscreen wipers would be fixed as benchmark to all new models of car. These days it is quite difficult to account for a world without replacement wiper blades in fact I suspect without them it would totally suck so lets all give a big hand to Ms Anderson for her amazing work.