The car sunshade

The folding cardboard sunshade behind the windshield was invented in 1970 by Avraham Levy, an Israeli businessman who had watched his country's sun turn parked cars into ovens. He sold a million of them across Israel — by his own count — and patented the CarCool shade in the United States in 1980. It became one of summer's most universal objects: an invention so simple-seeming that almost nobody knows it had an inventor.

Part of “The Gifts of the Jews” — verified Jewish contributions to the world, with sources.