Every day I hop into my car, switch on the engine, and drive off. If it is a hot day, I select to turn on the air conditioning or put down my convertible roof. On cool days I fix the heat system, to make sure I am comfy whilst driving. When it is raining, snowing or foggy I utilise my Wiper blades to clear the windscreen.

I do not generally think of how these things developed for my comfort, I just take it for granted that vehicles have these features to improve my driving experience. However, as winter nears, it caused me to think about the Windscreen wipers and what a brilliant invention they are.

I have searched for information on this matter 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 notion of Windscreen wipers in the form of brushes which swept up and down the windshield to clean it. I would think that the brushes probably caused quite a few scratches to the windscreen, so in 1905, when the American inventor, Mary Anderson, patented the swinging arm style of windshield wiper, with a rubber blade, this must have been enthusiastically accepted by the motor industry.

These early Windscreen wipers required the driver to move a lever in the car to work the wipers, so the next large move 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 motor vehicles.

All Windscreen wipers had rubber blades until quite recently. The troubles found with these were that owing to temperature changes, heat in summer, winter frosts, the rubber perished and the Wiper blades required replacement in a reasonably quick time period.

Silicone wiper blades are now also on offer and these are less susceptible to temperature variations than their rubber predecessors. Although the Silicone wiper blades are slightly more pricey than the rubber Windscreen wipers, they frequently come with a guarantee to not rot or crack, as can happen with the rubber wipers, and also claim to be able to follow the contours of the windshield better, giving a cleaner sweep.

We ask a lot from these brilliant little inventions. I expect to push or pull or turn a stick on my driving wheel and get an instant result from the Wiper blades. They are required to remove dust and flies from my windshield in the summer. When the roads are grimy, I require the mud to be cleaned from my windshield straight away, to give me high quality visibility. If it is icy first thing in the day, I switch on the heater and impatiently turn the Windscreen wipers on to clean the windshield more rapidly. In winter the heavy snow is shown short shrift.

For these reasons I give thanks 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.