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We may not give much thought to the little inventions that make our daily lives a whole lot easier.
However, for every modern convenience, there’s someone who dedicated themself to solve an irksome problem.
The can opener, refrigeration, windshield wipers life would be vastly different without innovations like these.
He had to continually stop the car, get out, and wipe off the glass.
She knew there had to be a better way.
On June 18, 1903, Anderson filed for a patent for her invention (viaNPR).
Later that year, she was granted patent number 743,801 from the United States Patent Office.
Unfortunately, her invention didn’t take off.
Cars were still relatively new at the time.
Henry Ford’s Model T wouldn’t be released until 1908 (viaInvestor’s Business Daily).
Ultimately, the product was written off as pointless.
The world wasn’t ready for Anderson’s creativity and progressive thinking.
Her genius patent expired in 1915.
It was on this stormy night that inspiration hit him.
He thought the wipers could instead move intermittently, at the pace in which humans blink.
This would be less distracting and still dump the rain.
Yet again, large corporations stole the invention from the inventor.
In 1978, Kearns sued the Ford Motor Company for patent infringement.
He did the same in 1982 with Chrysler for not honoring his patent.
The 2008 film"Flash of Genius"tells the story of Robert Kearns.
Mary Anderson was never given any compensation for her invention of the windshield wiper.
But, in 2011, she was inducted into theNational Inventors Hall of Fame.
