Snow and sleet pelted the windshield of the New York City streetcar Mary Anderson was riding on that winter’s day in 1902. It was the ride she would remember for the rest of her life, because it was that ride that inspired her to invent the world’s first windshield wiper.

Mary watched as the driver struggled to see through the blinding rain and snow, often having to stop the vehicle and clear off the windshield before he could proceed.

She wondered why someone didn’t invent something to clear the windshield. She voiced her concern to the other passengers and they told her it had been tried many times and couldn’t be done.

Mary thought this was nonsense and immediately began scribbling in her notebook with ideas she thought might work.  When she returned home to Alabama she continued to work on sketches of her invention, and hired a company to make a model which consisted of a lever the driver could pull that was attached to a blade on the windshield. When the operator pulled the lever it would cause the blade to swipe across the front windshield and clear it. Once she knew she had an operating model she filed her patent, which she was awarded with in 1903.

She wrote a large Canadian company offering to sell her rights. They decided her invention had no commercial value stating, “we do not consider it to be of such commercial value as would warrant our undertaking of its sale.”   Incredibly, many of her detractors thought her invention would be a distraction to drivers and a safety hazard.

Disheartened, Mary put her patent in a drawer and let it expire. After it’s expiration, someone else revived her patent and made their fortune from it.  In the 1920’s automobile production skyrocketed as cars became more popular, and in 1922 windshield wipers became standard equipment on Cadillac’s, with other models soon following.

The windshield wiper remains one of the greatest inventions for safety of the modern day automobile So, the next time you’re driving your car and your windshield is being pelted by rain or covered in snow and you turn on your windshield wipers, remember to thank a woman, thank Mary Anderson.