A Viral TikTok Reveals How Your Car's Window Actually Works

The world is full of mysteries humans haven't been able to unravel for centuries. What's the deal with the Bermuda Triangle? What really happened to Amelia Earhart? Do people really care that much about pizza toppings? How do car windows work?

Thanks to TikTok user impulseflame (and assuming nobody bothered to just Google it), the general public now has an easy answer to that last question. This is good, as power windows have been around since 1941.

Granted, the technology has changed and improved over the past several decades, so we're not using the same exact system as those Packard 180s that first introduced the concept. Gone are the hydraulics of yesteryear, with all modern vehicle power windows using electrical systems, and there are so few hand-cranked windows around these days that they might be viewed as some kind of cryptid — or a form of ancient technological history that you'd see sitting in a textbook right next to other relics of a bygone era like rotary phones and dial-up modems.

Okay, but how does it work? The minute particulars of the mechanism are likely a little different depending on the make and model of your vehicle, but the basic idea is the same. This applies to hand-cranked windows as well, though without the electronic bits. As the TikTok video shows, a pair of mechanical arms hold the window in place. Then they simultaneously move down to open the window, pulling the glass into the door itself.

And really that's all there is to it. The window in its entirety sits inside the door, with maybe a tiny sliver poking up at the top depending on the dimensions. The glass doesn't "roll up" like a window blind; it isn't magically hidden by fairytale creatures; its mass isn't displaced through an inter-dimensional portal or wormhole. This is the kind of long-running engineering trick that's brilliant in its simplicity — like door jams, or using the corner of a pistachio shell to pry open another pistachio shell.