Gladstone Adams' brainwave came 100 years ago as he drove home from London through a snowstorm having watched Newcastle United play Wolves in the 1908 FA Cup final.

Mr Adams set up a business in Whitley Bay in 1904 before becoming a photographer in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War.

He was then appointed the first official photographer to Newcastle United Football Club.

In June his work will go on sale and senior partner at Anderson & Garland auctioneers Andrew McCoull said he expected the collection to fetch several thousand pounds.

He said: "As a pioneer motorist he had driven down to London in his Darracq car little realising that not only would his beloved Newcastle lose 3-1 to Wolves, but that he'd be hit by an unseasonable snowstorm on his return trip.

"His Darracq, like all cars at that time, had to have its windscreen cleared of rain and snow by hand – either the driver's or a passenger's.

"Why, he thought, couldn't a simple, mechanically-operated blade be devised to move over the typical flat windscreen on his Darracq and solve the problem?

"It was an eureka moment that quickly resulted in the production of a working model and the lodging of its design with the Liverpool Patent Office."

Today the original design drawings, patent and first working model of his windscreen wiper are on display in a special section of Newcastle's Discovery Museum devoted to the innovations of famous north east of England men like George and Robert Stephenson, Sir Charles Parsons and Joseph Swan.

The photographs, negatives and camera equipment of the inventor, who died in 1966, are being sold on behalf of his daughter-in-laws.

"Not only did Gladstone Adams come up with the idea for the windscreen wiper but he was an extremely fine and successful commercial photographer," Mr McCoull said.

"Local shipyards, industries and the public continued to demand his services throughout his long and distinguished career – one of his photographs of the Mauritania leaving the Tyne on her maiden voyage in 1907 being acclaimed in a leading photography magazine of the day as a future 'Old Master'."

The collection includes the Mauritania study, some of his First World War aerial photography and his Newcastle United team portraits.