Watching trolley car drivers clear snow off their windshields by hand gave Mary Anderson an idea. After making this observation, she invented a window cleaning device that could be operated from inside the trolley. Though her windshield wiper design found little success during her lifetime, it became the blueprint for the wipers we use today. In honor of her birthday, let’s explore her early life, work, and legacy.
Anderson’s Early Life
Mary Anderson was born in Burton Hill Plantation, Alabama, on February 19, 1866, to John and Rebecca Anderson. Her father died when she was just four years old, and Mary, her sister Fannie, and their mother were able to survive off the proceeds of his estate. Little else is known about Anderson’s early life or educational background.
In 1889, the three women moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where Anderson became a real estate developer at age 23. A few years later, she decided to move to Fresno, California, to operate a cattle ranch and vineyard. After five years at the ranch, she returned to Birmingham to help care for her aunt and mother, where they survived on her aunt’s trunk full of valuable gold and jewelry.
Mary Anderson pictured in 1910. Licensed in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Inspiration Strikes
In the early 1900s, Anderson used some of her inheritance to take a trip to New York City. She rode a streetcar while it was snowing and noticed how difficult it was for the trolley driver to see where he was going. She thought about how inconvenient it was for him to lean out of the window and sometimes even stop the vehicle to wipe off the windshield with his hands. After observing this inefficiency, Anderson came up with the idea of a windshield wiper blade that could be operated from inside the trolley.
A streetcar pictured in 1903. Licensed in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Anderson was not an engineer, but she had a vision. She drew a sketch of a lever inside the vehicle that controlled a rubber blade on the outside of the windshield. The lever could be hand-operated by the driver to swing the spring-loaded arm back and forth across the windshield. Her design included a counterweight to make sure the wiper blade stayed in contact with the surface of the window to effectively remove raindrops. Several previous windshield-clearing devices had been invented, but none had worked as effectively as hers. Modern windshield wipers still follow this design today, though Anderson’s were initially meant to be removable and only attached for the winter.
Mary Anderson’s first sketch of her patented “Window Cleaning” device. Licensed in the public domain by The United States Patent and Trademark Office.
She hired a designer and local company to build a working model of her sketch, and she was awarded a patent for her “Window Cleaning” device in 1903. However, she struggled to sell the rights to the invention or find commercial success. Cars were not widely popular at the time, so companies were unwilling to invest due to a lack of demand. Many people also felt that the blade moving across the windshield would be distracting to drivers.
Her 17-year patent expired in 1920, just as automobiles were exploding in popularity, and in 1922, Cadillac became the first automobile manufacturer to build cars with windshield wipers included as a standard feature, which other car manufacturers quickly adopted.
Ahead of Her Time
By the time Anderson passed away in 1953 at age 87, cars with windshield wipers were ubiquitous. She passed without receiving any money or credit for her invention. In 2011, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, where they attribute her lack of success to her invention being “simply ahead of its time, and other companies and entrepreneurs were able to profit off her original ideas.” Some of her descendants have tried to keep Anderson’s legacy alive and shine a light on this independent entrepreneur.
Further Reading
- Learn more about Anderson’s life:
- Check out other interesting inventors on the COMSOL Blog:
- Olive Dennis, who pioneered comfortable passenger train travel
- Elijah McCoy, who invented a steam engine lubrication system, along with 57 other patents
- Beulah Louise Henry, who received 49 patents and created more than 100 inventions
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