Mary Anderson
History proved Mary right, but it was not kind to the Alabama inventor or her “window cleaning device.”
Long before cars and buses dominated the streets of big cities, trams were the main means of urban transport. In summer, the carriages were crowded and suffocating; In winter, the problem was the snow and ice that stuck to the windows and left drivers practically blind.
Without effective cleaning systems, drivers were left with two impractical options: leaning their heads out the window in the freezing cold, or stopping every few blocks to manually clean the glass outside.
It was this boringness that inspired Mary Andersonbusinesswoman from Birmingham, Alabama, during a visit to New York in the winter of 1902. Witnessing the tram operator’s difficulty, Mary imagined a mechanism that would allow the windshield to be cleaned from the inside, without opening doors or windows.
The woman quickly advanced to a prototype: a wooden arm with a rubber end which, activated by a lever inside the vehicle, moved over the glass with the help of a spring mechanism, removing snow and water.
On November 10, 1903, he received the North American patent for his “window cleaning device” — considered the first windshield wiper.
Patented by Mary Anderson
But surprisingly, the innovation failed. For at least a year and a half, when Anderson tried to sell the device to manufacturers linked to the nascent automobile industry, the answer was “no”, recalls .
In a 1905 letter, a Montreal company rejected the product because not recognizing its “commercial value”. There were also those who argued that the movement of the windscreen wipers could distract the driver and be more dangerous than driving with reduced visibility.
The inventor never married. It operated in a male-dominated business world marked by historic restrictions on women, from access to property to financing mechanisms. Even today, the female presence in the patent system seems to face a “brake”. Zorina Khan, professor of economics at Bowdoin College, explains.
“Firstly, the types of patentable technology are not aligned with the types of technology that women choose to create; secondly, patents enable markets for ideas and are not as useful if the creator does not want to sell their idea or commercialize their inventions”, says the economist to the renowned scientific magazine.
The irony is that history proved Mary rightinventor of the windshield wiper. With the popularization of the automobile, accelerated by the Ford Model T and online production, manufacturers recognized the usefulness of the instrument. By the early 1920s, versions of the mechanism had become standard on most vehicles.
Anderson’s patent expired in 1920, before his contribution was translated into relevant royalties. It was only in 2011 that his name would be consecrated with his entry into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, decades after his windshield wipers became indispensable around the world.
