Alabama native Mary Anderson () is credited with inventing the first operational windshield wiper. In her patent, she called her invention a window cleaning device for electric cars and other vehicles. Although her version of the device was never put into production, it closely resembles the windshield wiper found on many early car models.
Mary Anderson Anderson was born on Burton Hill Plantation in Greene County on February 19, , to John C. and Rebecca Anderson. Mary's father died when she was four, but Mary and her sister, Fannie, and mother continued to live off the proceeds from his estate. In , they moved to Birmingham and built the Fairmont Apartment building at 21st Street South on the corner of Highland Avenue.
Anderson left home in at age 27 to operate a cattle ranch and vineyard in Fresno, California. By , she had returned to Birmingham to help care for her ailing aunt; she once again lived in the Fairmont Apartments with her mother, her sister, and also now her brother-in-law, G. P. Thornton. Anderson's aunt brought to the apartment house with her a number of large trunks that no one was allowed to examine. After her death, the trunks revealed a collection of gold
Mary Anderson
While touring New York City in a trolley car on a snowy day in the early s, Mary Anderson conceived her idea of a windshield wiper blade that could be operated from the inside by the trolley driver.
Anderson observed that streetcar drivers often had to open their windows in order to see during inclement weather, sometimes even stopping the streetcar to go outside to clear the window. Her idea consisted of a lever inside the vehicle that controlled a spring-loaded arm with a rubber blade. The lever, with a counterweight to keep the wiper in contact with the window, could move the blade across the windshield, removing rain or snow. With her patent, Anderson's invention proved to be the first windshield-clearing device to be effective.
As driving became more and more common, the windshield wiper was eventually adapted for automotive use. In , Cadillac began installing the wiper as a piece of standard equipment on its cars.
During her lifetime, Anderson established herself as an entrepreneur. In addition to building and managing an apartment building in Birmingham, Alabama, she operated a cattle ranch and vineyard in Fresno, California.
The automotive industry has been male-dominated since time immemorial. Men founded most, if not all, car companies and created the cars, too. But some vital contributions and innovations are actually from women, whose names are often overlooked when discussing the industry's history. One who made a mark is Mary Anderson, the woman who invented the windshield wiper.
Anderson's windshield wiper was the first functional design of its kind, but automakers didn't immediately embrace it. While her patent application was granted in November , she never earned anything from her invention. Still, Anderson is regarded as one of the most influential women in automotive history.
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The Life And Legacy Of Mary Anderson
But of course, there was more to Mary Anderson than how she came up with the idea for the windshield wiper. She was born in Greene County, Alabama on Feb. 19, , to John C. and Rebecca Anderson. After her father's death in , her family lived off the proceeds of his estate. In , Mary, her mother, and her sister, Fannie, moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where they built the Fairmont Apartments, which
Mary Anderson: The Unheralded Inventor of the Windshield Wiper
Date November 2,
Est. Reading Time 4 mins
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On a snowy day in , National Inventors Hall of Fame® (NIHF) Inductee Mary Anderson was riding in a streetcar in New York City and observed how frustrated the vehicle’s driver was becoming as he struggled to remove the snow from the windshield. Often, the man had to stick his head outside the window and even stop the vehicle entirely to clean the snow off himself.
When Anderson returned home to Birmingham, Alabama, she thought about how there had to be a more efficient way of cleaning a windshield than what she had witnessed on her trip to the Big Apple. She sat down and began to sketch out a design for a wiper blade that could be operated from inside the vehicle. After finalizing the details of her idea, she filed a patent application for her creation on June 18,
A few short months later, on Nov. 10, , Anderson was awarded a patent for her “Window Cleaning Device.” In the patent application, Anderson explains that by operating a lever inside the vehicle, an external wiper blade moves across the windshield to provide safe visibility:
“From
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