Mary Anderson: The woman who invented windshield wipers.
Can you imagine driving a car without windshield wipers??
Mary Anderson got her idea for windshield wipers while watching a trolley driver struggle to clean his windshield.
New ideas can come from anywhere.
Mary Anderson, born in 1866, was an entrepreneur - which means she had good business sense and a LOT of creativity:
“In addition to building and managing an apartment building in Birmingham, Alabama, she operated a cattle ranch and vineyard in Fresno, California.
Mary Anderson │ The National Inventors Hall of Fame
She visited New York City in 1902. She found it absolutely ridiculous that the poor trolley driver had to open up the panes of the front window to see through the falling sleet.
When she returned home to Alabama, she start developing the first windshield wiper. Anderson started with a lever connected to a rubber band, and then added a weight on the blade so the wiper would stay in contact with the window. That meant that the windshield blade moved steadily across the windshield, removing rain or snow.
Most car companies didn’t see the value in it in 1922, but Cadillac did. It was the first car maker to include it on all their vehicles.
When her patent expired, windshield wipers became standard on all cars, trucks, and vehicles of all kinds. Anderson did not make any money from her idea. But she changed the driving world.
No more reaching outside to smear a clear space on the windshield - on cars or on trolleys!
