It’s hard to imagine a world where cars do not have windshield wipers, but there was indeed a “dark age” like that.
In 1902, Mary Anderson visited New York City and noticed the inconveniences of cars at that time. On a day with heavy snowfall, the driver of the streetcar she was on had to constantly get out to wipe snow off the windshield for better visibility, causing the vehicle to keep stopping.
During the time the car was halted, an idea suddenly struck Anderson: what if there were something that could wipe rain and snow off the windshield, allowing passengers to stay inside without manually clearing it?
Mary Anderson and the sketch she submitted for her patent, which did not find a buyer.
Upon returning to Birmingham, she realized her idea by creating her own design and explaining how it worked. This design was later patented on June 18, 1903, under the name “Window Cleaning Device“.
Anderson’s idea described a manually operated wiper controlled from inside the vehicle, which could be easily attached or detached, thus not obstructing the driver’s view on nice days.
She then attempted to persuade automobile manufacturers—a burgeoning industry at the time—to adopt her invention, but it was rejected because it was deemed “not commercially viable enough (considering the cost of purchasing the patent) to warrant.”
It wasn’t until 2011 that Mary Anderson was honored on the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame, standing alongside renowned figures like Steve Jobs and Henry Ford.
The patriarchal mindset of the time rendered Anderson’s voice incredibly weak. At that point, she had no father, no husband, and obviously no sons. However, by the time she passed away in 1953, windshield wipers had begun to gain popularity.
Despite not receiving any financial reward for her invention, Anderson was later recognized as the first inventor of the windshield wiper. In 2011, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
