Tantalizing, Illicit, Salacious

If you gave in to curiosity, I hope it was worth it…

I found this lone wiper blade the other day while running. I’m no mechanic, but I recognize this as the “dumb kind” that requires a screwdriver to install. I prefer the superior kind that only requires a few minutes of suppressing profanity while trying to scrape together enough spatial intelligence to snap it into place.

I have precious little mechanical knowledge to pass along, so I’ll get right down to the story of our modern windshield wiper.

It all began on a slushy, rainy New York street in 1903. A woman, far from home, watched the goings on of a nascent auto-driving society. Motorist after motorist solved the problem of a wet/slushy windshield by:

1) driving with their head out the window

2) stopping every block or so to get out and clean the windshield.

Mary “Don’t-tell-me-it’s-a-man’s-world” Anderson knew there was a better way, so she got to work. She developed and patented a manually operated windshield wiper. Her invention was a wood and rubber wiper arm operated by a handle that was accessible to the driver while INSIDE THE CAR! Despite the novelty, practicality, and good sense of her work, Mary’s invention didn’t catch on and she never made a cent from it. The setback didn’t seem to slow her down. In addition to being a pretty good problem-solving inventor, Anderson was also a cattle rancher, vineyard operator, and real estate developer.

Fast forward to 1919. William Forsythe created an automatic wiper system that was also neglected by the emerging auto industry. I suppose in those days men were men and cars were cars and visibility was insignificant?

By the 1940s, however, automakers were catching on to the fact that motorists might enjoy some amenities with the driving experience and windshield wipers became standardized on new vehicles. They weren’t fancy, just on and off, but they were a step in the right direction.

Enter Robert Kearns. He was known for three things: being a college professor, inventing a system for intermittent wiper speeds, and nearly blinding his right eye with a champagne cork on his wedding night (please self-select your course of imagination to make this scenario as tantalizing, illicit, or salacious as you want). 

However the wedding night played out, Kearns was a solutions kind of guy. Apparently, his vision issues prompted him to invent an intermittent wiper system that could more appropriately match weather conditions. In 1962, Kearns took this great idea to Ford, which predictably passed on it (seriously, auto industry, what was the issue with adopting visibility-enhancing technology for drivers?).

Despite the initial rejection, Ford eventually offered intermittent wipers on models in the late sixties, but not Kearns’ design. That was the going story, anyway. In 1976, Kearns got his hands on a Ford wiper assembly and discovered that they were using the design he had pitched over a decade earlier.

Litigation, anyone?

Unfortunately for Kearns, if you want to challenge any industry that guffaws at windshield wipers (not to mention hems and haws over seatbelts), you need deep pockets and tough lawyers. Ford had both. The legal battle dragged out for over twenty years, ultimately ending with Kearns being awarded a fraction of what he was seeking (that fraction was somewhere around $30 million, so the defeat couldn’t have been THAT crushing). Win some, lose some…

Cars with automatic, dual wiper systems are ubiquitous these days (aside from whatever vehicle shed the wiper that prompted this little jaunt into history), so it’s strange to think of the twists and turns it took to get here. Of course, it makes me wonder what other life-changing inventions the auto industry is holding back from us. As of the production of my 2007 Mazda 3, it’s cup holders that fit travel mugs, electric windows and locks, and automatic transmissions. Some of these problems may have been solved since then. I don’t know.