The sort of replacement wiper blades we currently recognise today are all descended from the prototype patented in 1903 by a Mrs Mary Anderson, of Birmingham, Alabama, United States. By comparison to today’s high tech wipers these were excessively atavistic. The basic appliance consisted of a hand crank which was operated by the driver from inside the cab. Mary Anderson was fired to create the first wipers upon a trip to New York City where she took account of the tram drivers wiping their wind screens by hand. Once the common wiper blade model was designed it was left to other means to actuate the wiper blades arm past the wind screen. The first development in this area was the vacuum system which applied force through what is called a vacuum pump. This apparatus utilised the difference in air pressure in the inside and the outside of the intake manifold to produce a vacuum force.

This development was thanks to the advent of the industrial revolution when Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company and initiated a plan of generating millions of auto mobiles with wipers fixed as standard. The internal combustion engine was in many ways the catalyst which generated the wind screen wiper into its contemporary standing in society. Today replacement wiper blades are truly ubiquitous discovered on every type of vehicle imaginable from the basic car, to aeroplanes, helicopters, boats and even hover craft. The problem with this set up back then was the speed of the wiper blades was determined by the extent of force produced from the vacuum. So at high speeds this was inversely proportional and the replacement wiper blades came to a all-out stop, unlike today’s modern electrically driven types. When the drive was started the wipers would go at an awesome rate but when the engine was absorbed going up a hill they would all but stop. This design has since been abandoned by the superior electric replacement wiper blades thanks to the design of the battery where energy can be amassed and dispensed at will.

By the mid nineteen sixties the vacuum powered replacement wiper blades was all but extinct and electric wipers were fitted as standard. Today the modern electric replacement wiper blades has many variable functional settings, these include a body of speed settings to suit the prevailing weather qualities and intermittent speed settings for when it is only spitting. Another innovation is the rain sensing system developed by Citroen of France in the nineteen seventies and fitted to its Maserati. This system didn’t sense the rain directly but instead measured the amount of resistance assailed when wiping the windscreen, more resistance indicated less rain water therefore the battery generated less power. When it rained the wiper blades would be exposed to less resistance and so the wiper blades would go at a faster rate for that reason. The wiper blades has to be manually turned on and off as well prior to use. Today’s rain sensing technology is different; it will turn on the wipers itself and will adjust the speed of the wipers by directly sensing the level of rain fall.

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