Window Cleaning Technology
Window Cleaning Technology: The Rise of the Robots
The method of cleaning windows has pretty much been the same since the invention of the squeegee, but all that may be about to change. What if your windows could be cleaned by a robot?
First let’s look at a little window cleaning history:
HISTORY
According to Wikipedia, the squeegee goes back to the Middle Ages, when fishermen scraped fish guts off boat decks with wooden swabs called “squilgees.” It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that window washers adopted a rubber-bladed version of the tool.
The Chicago squeegee, a heavy brute with two stiff pink rubber blades, was the state of the art until 1936, when Italian immigrant Ettore Steccone invented a light, brass- handled tool with a single, ultra-flexible blade. At first Mr. Steccone could not get anyone interested in his new tool so resorted to giving it away to window cleaners.
Once they tried it, a demand quickly grew for this new tool and today the Ettore Products Company is the world’s leading squeegee manufacturer with over $50 million in sales annually.
ETTORE SQUEEGEE SAVES THE LIVES OF SIX PEOPLE TRAPPED IN THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE.
When a hijacked airplane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center, six men, including Polish immigrant window washer Jan Demczur, found themselves trapped in an express elevator at the 50th floor. Thinking quickly, Demczur and the others pried open the elevator doors and used this squeegee handle to cut their way through the drywall of the elevator shaft. They squeezed through the hole in the wall, fleeing from the building just minutes before the tower fell.
You can read the full story of this event here http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2002/260204.shtml
You can see a picture of the actual squeegee used in this escape at this linkhttp://amhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/record.asp?ID=35
WINDOWS THAT CLEAN THEMSELVES
Several window manufacturers have now created windows that purportedly clean themselves. Typically these windows are coated with a thin transparent layer of titanium dioxide. This coating reacts with sunlight to break down organic material stuck to the window and then when rain contacts the window, it forms a thin sheet instead of small droplets which then rinses the dirt from the window.
THE FUTURE OF WINDOW CLEANING…ROBOTS?
A recent window cleaning entrant to the consumer market is the Winbot. You stick this machine to your window and it cleans it. How well does it work? Well, the jury is still out on that and it is really only designed for small jobs. But, the writing may be on the wall (or the window for that matter).
This is only the first generation of robots, so I would not be surprised if 20 years from now robot window cleaners will be the main way to clean high rise windows.