Today's topic is something which has provided clarity of vision, is called upon in troubled times and works tirelessly and thanklessly, sweeping aside that which threatens us with disaster: The windscreen wiper. Sometimes we forget the importance of the little bits of rubber that protect us from fluids that can mean the difference between life and death.

The windscreen wiper was invented by Mary Anderson in 1903. Well, all she really did was come up with the idea and then get somebody else to design it, then take all the credit. She was told by the company she asked to market the idea for her that "we do not consider it to be of such commercial value as would warant our undertaking of its sale". Serves her right I say. I bet those guys would feel like idiots if they knew that a hundred years later the Bosch corporation in Belgium alone churns out 300 000 of the things every day.

A windscreen wiper blade is held in place by a structure known as a whippletree, the kind of ridiculous name reserved for very important things that nobody thinks about, like uvulas (that thing that dangles from the back of our mouths) and aglets (those bits that keep the ends of shoelaces together). The whippletree is connected to the car by a long arm, and since windscreen wipers are a legal requirement in most countries, every time you go for a drive in the rain you have the long arm of the law in front of you. Waving a blade in your face. On a whippletree.

Don't ask.