Windscreen wiper

Almost all motor vehicles, including cars, trucks, buses, train locomotives, and watercraft with a cabin—and some aircraft—are equipped with one or more such wipers, which are usually a legal requirement.

On some vehicles, a windscreen washer system is also used to improve and expand the function of the wiper(s) to dry or icy conditions.

For these types of winter conditions, some vehicles have additional heaters aimed at the windows, embedded heating wire(s) in the glass, or embedded heating wire(s) in the wiper blade; these defroster systems can melt ice or help to keep snow and ice from building up on the windscreen.

One of the earliest recorded patents for the windscreen wiper is by George J. Capewell of Hartford Connecticut, which was filed on August 6, 1896.

Similar to current automotive wiper designs, his invention involves "usually two of these wipers, and they can be secured to the frame below the front board of the vehicle or behind the housing surrounding the window in position to be out of sight and in such manner that one will scrape off the heaviest part of the substance collected upon the glass."

At least three inventors patented windscreen cleaning devices at around the same time in 1903; Mary Anderson, Robert Douglass, and John Apjohn.

American inventor Mary Anderson is popularly credited with devising the first operational windscreen wiper in 1903.

[10] Inventor William M. Folberth and his brother, Fred, applied for a patent for an automatic windscreen wiper apparatus in 1919, which was granted in 1921.

In 1963, another form of intermittent wiper was invented by Robert Kearns, an engineering professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

Ford executives rejected Kearns' proposal at the time, but later offered a similar design as an option on the company's Mercury line, beginning with the 1969 models.

In March 1970, French automotive manufacturer Citroën introduced more advanced rain-sensitive intermittent windscreen wipers on its SM model.

If the windscreen was relatively dry, the wiper motor drew high current, which would set the control circuit timer to a long delay for the next wipe.

In 1945, John W. Anderson, founder of Trico rival Anco, filed a patent for a wiper with branched arms to keep the blade pressed uniformly against both curved and flat glass,[16] adaptable to almost any windscreen curvature.

However, various Mercedes-Benz models and other cars such as the Volkswagen Sharan employ wipers configured to move in opposite directions (Fig.

2), which is mechanically more complex but can avoid leaving a large unwiped corner of the windscreen in front of the front-seat passenger.

A cost benefit to the auto-maker occurs when wipers configured to move in opposite directions do not need to be repositioned for cars exported to right hand drive countries such as the UK and Japan.

The Triumph Stag, Lexus and several US makes employ this method to cover more glass area where the windscreen is quite wide but also very shallow.

5) called the "Monoblade", based on cantilevers, in which a single arm extends outward to reach the top corners of the windscreen, and pulls in at the ends and middle of the stroke, sweeping out a somewhat M-shaped path.

Asymmetric wiper arrangements are usually configured to clear more windscreen area on the driver's side, and so are mostly mirrored for left and right-hand-drive vehicles (for example, Fig.

On right-hand-drive models, a linkage allows the right-hand wiper to move outwards towards the corner of the windscreen and clear more area.

Headlamp wipers have all but disappeared today with most modern designs relying solely on pressurized fluid spray to clean the headlights.

This reduces manufacturing cost, minimizes aerodynamic drag, and complies with EU regulations limiting headlamp wiper use to glass-lensed units only (the majority of lenses today are made of plastic.)

[22][23] Uruguayan racecar driver and mechanic Héctor Suppici Sedes developed a windscreen washer in the late 1930s.

[24] Since 2012, nozzles are replaced on some cars (Tesla, Volvo XC60 2018-2021, Citroen C4 Cactus) by a system called AquaBlade, developed by the company Valeo.

This system suppresses visual disturbances during driving and so reduces the reaction time of the driver in case of incident.

The rain-sensing wipers system currently employed by most car manufacturers today was originally invented and patented in 1978 by Australian, Raymond J. Noack, see U.S.

A common alternative design used on ships, called a clear view screen, avoids the use of rubber wiper blades.

[26][27] In the 1999 television commercial Synchronicity for the Volkswagen Jetta automobile,[28] windscreen wipers were synchronized with events seen through the car windows, and with the song "Jung at Heart", which was commissioned for the advertising agency Arnold Worldwide and composed by Peter du Charme[29] under the name "Master Cylinder".

Windscreen wiper on a parked car. In this common design, the force from the arm is distributed evenly with a series of linkages known as a whippletree .
A common windscreen wiper arm and blade
A train windscreen wiper in operation (MRT Jakarta)
Patent illustration of 'window cleaner' by GEORGE J. CAPEWELL, OF HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
Anderson's 1903 window cleaner design
A "locomotive-cab-window cleaner" on 12 March 1903 [ 7 ]
Apjohn's 1903 window cleaning apparatus design
Pneumatic motor drive on a railroad locomotive windscreen wiper. The lever on the motor operates a valve to supply pressurized air.
Illustration showing the construction of multi-branched windshield wiper blade holder
Windscreen wiper arms and blades on a 1954 DKW-IFA F8 "Luxuscabriolet" from East Germany , using a simple radial design with no visible linkages
Lever mechanism of a windscreen wiper. The motor in the middle converts the circular rotation to an intermittent rotation. The lever arms have different lengths, so the stop position at the reverse point is different.
Simple parallelogram linkages on a boat windscreen
This 1974 Mercedes-Benz 220D uses oppositely-pivoted wiper blades. (Fig. 2)
Pantograph windscreen wipers (Fig. 6) used on Mercedes-Benz O 405 NH
Triple windshield wipers (Fig.7) used on a DAF XF truck
A V3A tram using a wiper geometry like Fig. 6, but uses a single wiper instead of two
Toyota Yaris with large single wiper
Windscreen washer in operation
Clear view screen provides a window of visibility, even in rough seas.