A wiper is a mostly rubber strip that is mounted on a frame and — the name says it all — is used to wipe water from windows.

Although the thing is used daily by many housewives and window washer cleaners, the word windshield wiper usually means specifically the version used on cars.

The earliest shape of the windshield wiper is the hand-operated version on cars from the beginning of the twentieth century. Especially the hinged wiper at the top of the windshield has become known. Soon the brush on the wiper arm was replaced by a rubber strip. Although the electric wiper in its earliest form dates from 1917, the wipers that work on underpressure predominate until the Second World War, especially in the United States. Designed by a car mechanic from Cleveland, William Folberth (1920), these suction wipers were mainly produced by Trico. In Germany, the first autonomous working (vacuum) wiper came on the market in 1924.

The principle of two parallel wiper arms was used for the first time on an electric wiper in 1922 (Frank Stewart, Chicago) and after the early thirties also the automatic idle position and a few years later the variable speed was introduced, the under pressure wiper was doomed. This system accelerated when the car slowed down (high underpressure in the intake manifold) and could completely stop at full load (fully opened throttle) due to lack of underpressure. Even the damping vacuum reservoir in the Ford Popular could no longer reverse the development of the electric variant.

In 1922 Trico started and in 1926 Bosch started the production of electric wipers, while Zeiss-Ikon and SWF also took patents. At the IAA in Berlin in 1928, the first wiper appeared with two speeds. This system was later introduced in general terms, because the required wiping frequency increased in the course of time from 40 to 50 km / h due to the increasing vehicle speed, to around 65 km / h. The double windscreen wiper does not appear on the scene in Europe until the 1930s.

Windshield wipers often work in combination with windshield washers and headlamp wipers. At the start they made use of a hand or foot pump. Trico designed a nozzle for underpressure in 1936. The breakthrough of the electric sprayer is in the fifties (Lucas 1953). Around 1965 the better middle class car was equipped with an electric wipe / wash installation.