I’m a big fan of sailing, ships, navies, etc. I’ve never been on a big freighter/liner/navy vessel, though, but I have seen many movies and documentaries on them.
These always feature a view of the bridge, with its big windows. And often, I see in the middle of these windows something that looks like a porthole. It’s round, surrounded by a wide ring or flange of some dark material, and always has a short spindle sticking through the center. Sometimes it looks like the spindle is connected to the flange by a holder.
Now for the life of me I can’t figure out what this thing is for. It looks like a clear plastic record player embedded in the window. Is this some sort of heads-up radar display? A porthole (and why do you need a porthole in the middle of a window)? A 1920s-style death ray for ships?
It’s a windshield wiper. During a storm at sea, the disc spins at a high rate, flinging the water out to the edges and providing a clear field of vision. And it means that no one has to go out on deck to replace wiper blades during the storm.
:eek: A windshield wiper? OK, I guess, but I’m sure I’ve seen them on ships that also had windshield wipers on the windows. Does it have a special name, so I could look at one up close on the Web?
The window insert is rotated at a speed that does not allow rain (or snow or (it is hoped), ice) to stick to it and it also resists fogging as it always has air “moving” across it as it spins (although more recently they have begun providing heaters, as well).
(For some reason, I had thought that these were sometimes called Kent Windscreens, but I can find no support for that odd notion on-line.)
Clear views come in sizes between 300 mm and 400 mm. A ship’s window is generally much larger. The clear view provides absolute clarity for an officer to stare through in really harsh conditions. For general rain squalls and spray, you’d want something to keep the rest of the wheelhouse windows clear so that everyone could look out.
You are mistaken, what you are thinking is the wiper is actually the electrical feed to the motor. (No matter how hard they try the just can’t get the electricy to jump that last 10" )
Its not just ships - I have been on smallish power boats fitted with small versions of them. Never seen a vessel fitted with both tradtiional wipers and clearview windows, though.
A lot of your high end machining centers have them as well, so you can watch the machine work, while it sprays coolant/cutting fluid all over the place.
No, you’re not mistaken. Two of the ships I’ve served on had clearviews and wipers. Actually, just one clearview in the center window, then wipers on the remaining four front windows. The only downside to clearviews that I could tell is that on nice days when you didn’t need it, much of your vision through that window was obstructed because it’s always there. So it was nice having four windows without the clearview to see through unobstructed.
Now that I’m thinking about it, 633squadron, if you’re asking about having a clearview and wipers on the same window, then I’d guess you probably were mistaken about the wipers. You obviously wouldn’t have both on the same pane.
I served on a guided missile cruiser. We had two clearviews in forward facing windows on the bridge and traditional wipers on the rest of them.
That included, too, the port and starboard windows. We didn’t need clearviews there, as there was always a lookout on the bridgewing, whatever the weather was like.
It’s the same reasoning that puts belt loops, suspender buttons, two fly buttons, a slider thingy and a zipper on dress pants: to make really, really, really sure your pants don’t fall down. Or to make sure you don’t run into an iceberg. Because it’d really suck to have to say, “Well, we would have missed the iceberg, but the $2 motor on the clearview burned out and we couldn’t see where we were going, so… sorry…”
)