You cannot tell some people to ‘be normal.’ And particularly not a woman in the 1890s. At 23, Mary Anderson moved with her widowed mother and sister to Birmingham, Alabama. She quickly showed her acumen for enterprise by becoming a real estate developer and built what were then the Fairmont Apartments on Highland Avenue. Four years later, at 27, she left Birmingham to operate a cattle ranch and vineyard in Fresno, California.
On a trip to New York in 1902, she watched as her trolley car driver tried to see through his sleet-covered window. When the sleet was too thick, the driver had to stop the vehicle and clean the window by hand. Anderson saw an opportunity and designed a hand-operated window cleaning device with a spring-loaded rubber wiper blade. Her patent, filed in 1903, had a 17-year life, just long enough for her to make a fortune on the expanding automobile market.
BUY A SNAPSHOT OF HISTORY!!
A RAT’S NEST OF RAILS
(An in-the-weeds look at the construction of the Alaska Railroad.)
www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi
Why not take a ‘listen’ to the dark side of Alaska?
For free!!