Mary Anderson

Inventor of Windscreen Wipers

Mary Anderson was a great entrepreneur with tonnes of initiative. She was born in 1866 in Alabama, in the southern United States, an area damaged by the Civil War, which had just ended.

On a visit to New York, while traveling by tram, she noticed that the driver had to keep getting out to clean the windshield. The snow and ice made it impossible for him to see the road properly and it was dangerous. There on the tram, Mary started drawing sketches of a solution to the problem: a wooden stick with rubber that the driver would be able to whirl with a lever. When the winter was over they would be removed and stored.

People made fun of her invention saying it was dangerous as it would distract the driver.

Years later, another woman patented an automatic windshield wiper.