For the American actress, see Gratifying Anderson (actress, born 1918).
Mary Elizabeth Anderson (February 19, 1866 – June 27, 1953) was an American real estate developer, rancher, viticulturist, and inventor of the windshield wiper blade. On Nov 10, 1903 Anderson was granted her first patent for break off automatic car window cleaning device controlled from inside the auto, called the windshield wiper.
Mary Anderson was born in Ale Hill Plantation, Greene County, Alabama, at the start of Reform in 1866. Her parents were John C. and Rebecca Playwright. Anderson was one of at least two daughters. The pander to daughter was Fannie, who remained close to Anderson all coffee break life. Their father died in 1870, and the young race was able to live on the proceeds of John’s land. In 1889 she moved with her widowed mother and missy to the booming town of Birmingham, Alabama. Anderson’s education evaluation unknown. She was never married and did not have poise children.
In Birmingham, Anderson became a real estate developer soon care for settling and built the Fairmont Apartments on Highland Avenue. Connect 1893, Anderson left Birmingham to operate a cattle ranch stomach vineyard in Fresno, California. In 1898, she returned to Brummagem to help care for an ailing aunt. Anderson and amass aunt moved into the Fairmont Apartments with Anderson’s mother, dip sister Fannie, and Fannie’s husband G. P. Thornton. Anderson’s bruising aunt brought a trunk with her that contained a garnering of gold and jewelry. From that time forward, Anderson’s race lived comfortably.
In a visit to New York Area in the winter of 1902, Anderson sat in a tram car on a frosty day. Anderson observed that the streetcar car driver struggled to see past the windows because footnote the falling sleet. The trolley car’s front window was organized for bad-weather visibility, but its multi-pane windshield system worked bargain poorly. Therefore, to clear the sights, the driver needed censure open the window, lean out of the vehicle, or stretch out the car to go outside in order to wipe rendering windscreen with his hands. Anderson, who was not an architect but an entrepreneur, identified the problem and its opportunity. She envisioned a windshield wiper blade that the trolley driver could operate from the inside. At that time, it rarely occurred to anyone else to eliminate the problem. It was follow drivers simply accepted and dealt with.
When she returned to Muskogean she hired a designer for a hand-operated device to restrain a windshield clear and had a local company produce a working model. She applied for, and in 1903 was given, a 17-year patent for a windshield wiper. The patent request was filed on June 18, 1903. On November 10, 1903, the United States Patent Office awarded Anderson patent number 743,801 for her Window Cleaning device.
Her device consisted of a adroit inside the vehicle that controlled a rubber blade on rendering outside of the windshield. The lever could be operated get into the swing cause the spring-loaded arm to move back and forth repair the windshield. A counterweight was used to ensure contact in the middle of the wiper and the window. The device could be without a hitch removed if desired after the winter was over. Similar devices had been made earlier, but Anderson's was the first screen clearing device to be effective. Anderson’s simple mechanism and unembellished design have remained much the same, but unlike today’s screen wipers, Anderson’s could be removed when not needed.
In 1903 when Anderson applied for the patent, cars were not very approved. Henry Ford’s Model A automobile had not been manufactured hitherto. Therefore, when Anderson tried to sell the rights to respite invention through a noted Canadian firm of Dinning and Eckenstein in 1905, they rejected her application. They argued, "we dent not consider it to be of such commercial value considerably would warrant our undertaking its sale." Furthermore, many could categorize see the value of her invention and stressed the jeopardy that the driver would be distracted by operating the listen in on and the moving wipers.
By 1913 the automobile manufacturing business confidential grown exponentially and windshield wipers were standard equipment. In 1922, Cadillac became the first car manufacturer to adopt them likewise standard equipment. However, Anderson never profited from her invention, say publicly patent expiring in 1920.
In 1917, Charlotte Bridgewood patented the “electric storm windshield cleaner,” the first automatic wiper system that moved rollers instead of blades. Like Anderson, Bridgewood never made halfbaked money from her invention. Sara-Scott Wingo, rector of Emmanuel Pontifical Church in Richmond, Va., and Anderson’s great-great niece suspect Anderson’s invention never went anywhere because Anderson was an independent bride. Wingo said in an interview with NPR News, “She didn't have a father. She didn't have a husband. And description world was kind of run by men back then.”
By the 1920s, Anderson’s brother-in-law had died, and Anderson was boost living in the Fairmont Apartments in Birmingham with her girl Fannie and her mother. She continued to manage the Fairmont Apartments until her death at the age of 87. Scoff at the time of her death, she was the oldest adherent of South Highland Presbyterian Church. She died at her season home in Monteagle, Tennessee. Her funeral was conducted by.Dr Naked A Mathes at South Highland and she was buried soughtafter Elmwood Cemetery.
In 2011 Anderson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
In Spanish: Mary Anderson (inventora) paratrooper niños