Charlotte Bridgwood (''

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

'' Dunn, 18 August 1861 – 20 August 1929) was a Canadian vaudeville performer and inventor. She is the mother to

Florence Lawrence Florence Lawrence (born Florence Annie Bridgwood; January 2, 1886 – December 28, 1938) was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film act ...

, regarded as the “first movie star” and inventor of the turn signal, traffic light, and brake light.

Career

Theatre

Charlotte Bridgwood, known by the stage name “Lotta Lawrence,” was the lead actress for the Lawrence Dramatic Company, which she also managed. She went on to act in many movies with her daughter, including '' Daniel Boone/Pioneer Days in America'' and ''

The Shaughraun ''The Shaughraun'' is a melodramatic Play (theatre), play written by Irish people, Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. It was first performed at Wallack's Theatre, New York City, New York, on 14 November 1874. Dion Boucicault played Conn in the ...

.'' While her daughter continued acting in film, Charlotte returned to stage productions.

Automotive advancements

Charlotte Bridgwood was president of the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company. She was an automobile enthusiast. She decided to improve Mary Anderson's manual windshield wipers, in which people had to use levers to operate the windshield wipers. Through her manufacturing company, she invented automatic windshield wipers that she called "Electric Storm Windshield Cleaner". She patented the first electrically powered windshield wiper in 1917, improving previous manually operated wipers such as the one patented by Mary Anderson in 1905. However, her wiper used rollers rather than blades and did not catch on. Patent Design of Charlotte Bridgwood Electric Windshield Wipers

Patent Design of Charlotte Bridgwood Electric Windshield Wipers

Patents

In October 1917, Charlotte received a patent for the first automatic windshield cleaner. The patent protected the mechanism of rollers powered by the car's engine or a separate motor to clean the windshield. However, she never brought her design into full production, so the patent expired in 1920. Since US patent law no longer protected her product’s propriety, it was only a matter of time until large car manufacturers picked up her design.

Cadillac Cadillac Motor Car Division, or simply Cadillac (), is the luxury vehicle division (business), division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM). Its major markets are the United States, Canada and China; Cadillac models are ...

was the first company to adopt the design two years later. Charlotte Bridgwood’s invention was left without much recognition.

References

1861 births 1929 deaths 20th-century American inventors 20th-century American women inventors Entertainers from Hamilton, Ontario Canadian emigrants to the United States {{Canada-engineer-stub