Even though I live in Virginia, I still subscribe to my old home town newspaper, the Times Union, in Albany, New York. One of the features they run is called, “Around the Region” and they publish news from 50 and 100-years ago. This article from 100-years ago is a bit of a rib tickler as it explains how the police put tickets on cars before windshield wipers became commonplace on cars.
Cadillac is credited with being the first to build cars with windshield wipers as a standard feature in 1922. It took a few years before the rest followed suit…
As for keeping their cars from being stolen before the advent of keyed ignition switches… when I was young, a neighbor had an old, old, really old car, that he would hand crank to start (he sold the car before I got much older and I do not know what it was…), But he locked a chain around the brake pedal and left it lying on the floor when he drove it. When he parked it, he pulled up the free end of the chain and ran it through the steering wheel and locked that end…