Mary Anderson patents the windshield wiper - November 10th, 1903

On this day in 1903, Alabama native Mary Anderson was awarded a patent for her early design of windshield wipers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that gives a quick look it's something that
happened a long time ago. Today, I'm Gabe Lousier and
in this episode, we're talking about an overlooked inventor who

(00:24):
dreamed of making driving safer before cars were even on
the road. The day was November tenth three. Alabama native
Mary Anderson was awarded a patent for her early design

(00:47):
of windshield wipers. She didn't use that term though. Instead
the patent refers to her invention as a quote window
cleaning device for electric cars and other vehicles to remove snow, ice,
or sleet from the window, which is a bit of
a mouthful. As an independent woman at the turn of

(01:08):
the century, Mary Anderson was always going to have a
hard time selling her ideas to the public. A catchier
name probably wouldn't have fixed that, but it also couldn't
have heard. The woman behind the window cleaning device was
born on February eighteen sixty six on a plantation in

(01:28):
Greene County, Alabama. In eighteen eighty nine, Mary moved with
her sister and mother to Birmingham, Soon after they arrived,
they built and operated the Fairmont Apartments building using proceeds
from the sale of the family plantation. By the winter
of nineteen o three, Mary had received a sizeable inheritance

(01:49):
from her aunt and was eager to have some fun
with it by taking a trip to New York City.
While touring the Big Apple on an especially snowy day,
Mary hipped on a street car to get out of
the cold. That's when she noticed that the man driving
the trolley could barely see through the wet windshield. At
the time, a trolley car's front window was split into

(02:13):
multiple panes of glass that the driver could open and
move out of the way when they became covered in
rain or snow. As you might imagine, the multi pane
windshield didn't work well in practice. Opening the panels exposed
the driver's face and those of all the passengers sitting
behind him to the bad weather outside. That may have

(02:35):
been worth the discomfort if the system actually helped the
driver see better, but of course it didn't because there
was still a storm outside whether the windshield was open
or not. The workaround for most trolley car drivers was
to stick their heads out of the window to see
where they were going. The other option was to stop

(02:56):
periodically to clean the windshield, which inevitably slowed down the service.
That day in New York, Mary observed what a hassle
all of this was for the driver and for her
fellow passengers. She began to dream up a better solution
during the ride, and when she returned to Alabama, she
started sketching up concepts for a more practical way to

(03:18):
clean a windshield. The design she settled on was an
arm on the outside window with a rubber blade attached.
The arm was connected to a lever on the interior
of the vehicle, which was waited to ensure the blade
maintained contact with the glass. When the driver pulled on
the spring loaded lever, the blade outside would swing back

(03:41):
and forth, clearing the windshield. Unlike the wipers of today,
Mary's design wasn't a built in mechanism. When winter was over,
you could easily remove it until the following year, or
whenever it happened to rain next. Similar concepts had been
proposed before, but Mary's was the first to work effectively.

(04:03):
She filed for a patent in June of nine oh three,
and it was granted five months later, you might expect
that Mary made a fortune off her clearly useful invention,
but try as she might, she couldn't find any takers
for the idea. She approached numerous companies but was turned
down every time. The rejection letter she received from a

(04:24):
Canadian manufacturing firm explains why no one was interested. It says, quote,
we beg to acknowledge receipt of your recent favor with
reference to the sale of your patent. In reply, we
regret to state we do not consider it to be
of such commercial value as would warrant our understanding its sale.

(04:46):
In other words, the company didn't think anyone would buy
when shield wipers. That sounds absurd today now that they've
become a standard feature on every vehicle on the road,
but Mary was way ahead of the curve of when
proposing her idea. At the time, cars still weren't a
common form of transportation. In fact, it would be another

(05:07):
five years before Henry Ford began selling the Model T
Since the majority of people in the US didn't own
a car, that left public transit like trolley cars as
the primary market, and corporations just didn't think there was
enough money there to be worth the trouble. The short
sighted consensus was that the wipers weren't useful, but some

(05:30):
people insisted they were all so dangerous, claiming the movement
of the blades would distract the driver. With no one
to make and distribute her invention, Mary eventually gave up
on selling it all together. In nineteen seventeen, another female
inventor named Charlotte Bridgewood patented a different take on the

(05:50):
system that used rollers instead of blades. Sadly, her design
never made it off the drawing board either. By the
time Mary's patent expire in nineteen twenty, the use of
automobiles was far more commonplace. This made the need for
windshield wipers more apparent than ever, but Mary decided she

(06:11):
wouldn't be the one to fill that need. Other entrepreneurs
and companies happily joined the fray in her stead, some
of which even used her design since it was no
longer under protection. In nineteen twenty two, Cadillac made windshield
wipers a standard feature for all of its cars, and
the rest of the automotive industry did the same soon after.

(06:34):
Not much is known about Mary Anderson's later life, though
she did live another thirty three years after her patent expired,
she continued to manage the building where she and her
family lived, and on June nineteen fifty three, she died
at their summer home in Tennessee. She didn't get the
success her invention deserved, but decades later she did at

(06:57):
least get recognition for it. In Twin eleven, Mary Anderson
was inducted into the Inventor's Hall of Fame, taking her
place alongside famous innovators such as Thomas Edison and Henry
Ford himself. Today, Mary's ingenuity continues to be an inspiration
to young inventors and to her family, including her great

(07:18):
great niece, Reverend Sarah Scott Wingo. In a interview, she
told NPR quote, we're all really proud of her. I
have three daughters, and we talk about Mary Anderson a lot.
We all sort of feel like we want to be
open and receptive to our own Mary Anderson moments. And yeah,

(07:40):
that's good advice for anyone, because you never do know
when inspiration might strike. I'm Gabe Lousier, and hopefully you
now know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show,
you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. T

(08:00):
d i HC Show, and if you have any comments
or suggestions, please send them to me at this day
at i heeart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays
for producing the show, and thank you for listening. I'll
see you back here again tomorrow for another day in
History class. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit

(08:27):
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