Winter mornings spent shivering and scraping the ice from your windscreen are over. Scientists have developed a coating for glass which keeps it clear regardless to whether its ice or snow. Anything that is.

Created by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it repels rain but absorbs moisture from the environment rather than allowing it to gather as condensation.

The coating is a ‘zwitter-wettable surface’ which absorbs molecular moisture from the environment but repels rain.This means that, in effect, rain will bounce off the surface but dampness in the air will be absorbed rather than allowed to gather as condensation on the surface.

I will only believe in such a system if it is tested on Dartmoor, Devon. Here we have the highest rainfall in the UK, lots of snow, ice and fog.