Mary Anderson

Mary Anderson was an American real estate developer, rancher, viticulturist, and inventor of the first commercially viable windshield wiper. On November 10, 1903, Anderson was granted her first patent for an automatic trolley car window cleaning device controlled from inside the car, now commonly called a windshield wiper. It operated by hand crank and used a blade held against the windshield with weights and springs. Her invention was brushed off by the car, train, and trolley manufacturers and used without attribution by them later. The history of windshield wipers is included in this chapter.