Which car manufacturer invented the windshield wiper? None of them.  Believe it or not, the first windshield wiper was thought up by a real estate developer named Mary Anderson, and she never made a penny from her invention.  Keep reading for more information!

As the story goes, on a cold, wet winter day in the early 1900s, Mary Anderson, originally from Alabama, was riding on a streetcar in New York City when she saw the driver could barely see the road ahead through the sleet-drenched front windshield. On that day, Mary Anderson sketched her wiper device while in the car. The solution seemed easy enough. One simply needed a mechanical arm operated by the driver that would sweep the rain and snow off the windshield.

With that understanding, she went to work.  Anderson’s first prototype was a set of spring-loaded wiper blades made of rubber and wood that were attached to a lever near the steering wheel.  When the driver pulled the lever, he or she dragged the spring-loaded arm across the window and back again, eliminating sleet, snow or other items of inconvenience. It sounded easy, and it actually worked.

Realizing that she had a perhaps valuable idea going, Anderson contacted a patent lawyer. After many months of work, her patent application was filed.  In November of 1903 she received U.S. Patent No. 743,801 for her “window cleaning device for electric cars and other vehicles to remove snow, ice or sleet from the window.”  This was the first patent to be filed to address that issue.

As a sharp investor, Anderson then tried to license the invention.  The problem was that Anderson was ahead of her time.  Motor cars and trolleys were low-speed vehicles at that time and opening up front window, or the driver sticking their head out a side window, was an acceptable way to see the road ahead in bad weather. Because this was how it was done at the time, Ms. Anderson had multiple skeptics. Many said that the wipers’ movement would distract the driver and cause accidents, but Anderson did not think that way. Anderson still contacted several manufacturing firms with licensing deals, but the companies refused: This device had no real value, they said, and so licensing wasn’t going to happen.

But, after years, Anderson ran out of time and the patent expired. Though mechanical windshield wipers were default equipment in passenger cars by around 1916, Anderson never got a penny for an invention that today is on nearly every motor vehicle that is made today.

When Anderson thought up her idea, the automobile technology at that time was surprisingly crude to deal with the problem.  What the manufacturers did back then was split the front windshield of vehicles into two sections that could be swung open. This allowed the driver to easily open their windshield to see the road ahead of them when the weather was bad.   The issue, of course, was that sleet and rain would blow into the streetcar. Now you know how the windshield wiper came about!

Article Courtesy of: Urse Dodge of Morgantown

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