Whilst every part of a car is purposefully designed for safety and aerodynamic reasons, there are a lot of hidden technological marvels in the piece of curved glass all drivers look through without noticing.

The glass itself is made from layers of tempered and laminated glass so it remains in one piece in an accident, it is glued carefully in place to provide structural rigidity if the car rolls over, and even the black dot matrix pattern helps to stop warping, keep the glass in place and spread heat evenly.

The careful manufacturing it takes to make a windscreen, therefore, means that it needs to be repaired or replaced by a professional.

Whilst it is all but impossible to find a windscreen that is not curved today, the car that innovated and inadvertently popularised the concept was a remarkable failure.

Initially released in 1934, the Chrysler Airflow CW was not the first car ever made with a curved windscreen, having been beaten to that honour by 13 years by the extremely unsuccessful Rumpler Tropfenwagen.

The Airflow, however, was designed to try and fix all of the issues with car safety at the time, not only featuring the curved windscreen and the increased safety that it offered but also having better handling, weight distribution and suspension springs, meaning that in the hands of most drivers, it was less likely to get out of control.

Rather infamously, the Chrysler Airflow was pushed off a cliff as a demonstration of its safety capability, surviving with remarkably little damage, including to the windscreen.

However, it was a car believed to be too ahead of its time for its customers and it was remarkably unsuccessful, at least for Chrysler themselves.

It proved to be highly influential in the rest of the world, inspiring Toyota, Volkswagen and Tatra to make more aerodynamic cars with safety in mind, inadvertently popularising the curved windscreen even if it never got to enjoy the benefits.