Women's History Month - Steveston Heritage Sites

Streetcars, Snowfalls, and a Brilliant Idea: Mary Anderson and Charlotte Bridgwood

October is Women’s History Month in Canada. This is a time to celebrate the achievements of women and girls, past and present, who have shaped our country in fields ranging from science and business to the arts, economy, and transportation.

Transportation is About People

At the Steveston Tram Museum, we appreciate that transportation history is about more than vehicles and technology. It is first and foremost about the people who imagined new possibilities and found ways to make travel safer and easier.

This October, we would like to highlight two women whose ideas helped change transportation: American inventor Mary Anderson, and Canadian-born inventor Charlotte Bridgwood.

A World Without Windshield Wipers?

Where would we be without windshield wipers on our cars, buses, trains, and trams?

The story begins with Mary Anderson. In 1902, the successful businesswoman was travelling aboard a New York City streetcar during a winter snowfall. As snow and sleet covered the windshield, the driver repeatedly stopped to clear the glass by hand or opened the window to wipe it from the inside.

Anderson saw the problem and imagined a solution: A mechanical blade operated from inside the vehicle. She sketched her idea while still on the streetcar and later developed a working prototype. In 1903, she patented her manually operated windshield-cleaning device.

Unfortunately at that time, manufacturers were not interested. Her invention was considered unnecessary or even dangerous, and her patent eventually expired.

A Canadian Takes the Idea Further

Fourteen years later, Canadian-born Charlotte Bridgwood took Anderson’s idea a step further.

Born in Canada in 1861, Charlotte grew up in the world of theatre. Known professionally as “Lotta Lawrence”, she became a performer, theatre manager, businesswoman and mother. She was also an automobile enthusiast and an inventor.

Charlotte was one of the few women who drove in the early 1910s. She needed to drive in all kinds of weather to get to theatre appointments. Windshield wipers did not exist on cars at that time. Experiencing first-hand the difficulties and danger this caused when driving in bad weather, Charlotte got to work designing. In 1917, she patented an automatic windshield-cleaning device . Unlike Anderson’s hand-operated blade, Charlotte’s system used the vehicle’s engine or a separate motor to move rollers across the windshield, allowing the driver to keep their hands on the wheel.

Charlotte was so confident in her invention that she established the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company to produce it. Despite her efforts, the invention did not achieve commercial success, and her patent expired in 1920.

An Idea Ahead of Its Time

Neither woman received financial rewards or recognition at the time for their inventions. Yet their ideas helped move windshield cleaning from a task left up to the driver wiping the windshield down themselves toward the automatic systems we use today.

Over the following decades, windshield wipers continued to evolve. In the 1920s, vacuum-powered wipers connected to the engine became common, followed by electric wipers. Windshield wipers were a standard safety feature on cars by the 1940s. In the 1950s, the two-blade wiper system had become standard, and in the 1960s, intermittent wipers were introduced as a feature now common on cars. In the 1990s, further innovations such as rain-sensing technology were introduced in luxury vehicles. More recent innovations include heated wiper blades!

Mary Anderson noticed a problem on a snowy streetcar ride. Charlotte Bridgwood saw an opportunity to improve driving safety. Both women remind us that transportation history is filled with people who looked at everyday problems and asked, “How can this be done better and made safer?”