Mayhap this can help.
"Company founder Phillip Drackett began his career as a pharmacist in Cleveland, but his personal interest in chemicals soon drew him from the end products to their components. At the age of 56, Drackett got out of the drug business entirely to start a bulk chemical brokerage with his wife, Sallie, in Cincinnati in 1910. When their sons, Phillip Jr. and Harry, joined the firm in 1915, the company was incorporated as P. W. Drackett & Sons Co. The company sold chemicals, including lye, ammonia, and epsom salt, under the "diamond D" trademark. But, like its Cincinnati neighbor and sometime competitor, Procter & Gamble Co., Drackett would make its fortune from the emerging revolution in American homemaking.
Drackett's first consumer product, Drano, was developed from lye, a corrosive cleaner made by leaching wood ashes. Lye had long been used to dissolve animal fat into soap, and its cleansing power was well known. Drano's creation and success can be attributed, in large part, to the installation of indoor plumbing in most American homes after World War I. According to Susan Strasser's Never Done, an examination of housekeeping in the United States, indoor plumbing aroused a mixture of relief and apprehension in homemakers. While they no longer had to haul water and sewage to and from their homes, they now feared the specter of "sewer gas," clogged drains, and backups. Introduced in 1923, Drano helped alleviate this concern.
Crystal Drano was a combination of solid lye and bits of aluminum that produced a hot, fizzing reaction that promoters called "churning action" to melt and scrub away dirt, grease and hair. The Dracketts soon proved themselves savvy marketers as well as an astute product development team. Sallie Drackett devised the Drano name, with the macron above the "a" that ensured there would be no confusion about the product's intended use. Her drawing of a gooseneck pipe with a dotted line representing clear-flowing pipes remained the Drano symbol throughout the brand's history. For nearly fifty years, Drano was virtually the only chemical drain cleaner used in American households.
The company acknowledged its shift from industrial to consumer goods by changing its name from Drackett Chemical Co., which it had adopted in 1922, to just Drackett Co. in 1933, when it went public.
Based on Drano's commercial success, Drackett turned its attention toward the development of other consumer cleaning products. The company's Windex, introduced in 1935, was the first successful glass cleaner on the market. Before its launch, window washing was reserved for spring and fall cleaning--and in many middle-class homes, it was reserved for the servants. But as hired help disappeared from the average domestic landscape, physically demanding and time-consuming chores such as window cleaning fell to homemakers. Windex's blue formulation of water, its trademarked "ammonia-D," and additional chemicals that hastened evaporation were both effective and convenient. The pre-mixed product eliminated hauling buckets, the need for a squeegee, and streaks. Windex's convenience prompted women to clean windows and mirrors more often, thereby increasing sales. Both Windex and Drano captured and held more of their respective markets than all other competitors combined for decades. "
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/drackett-professional-products-history/
Here is a magazine advert from 1935:
http://www.atticpaper.com/proddetail.php?prod=1935-windex-ad-washes-without-water
Near as one has been able to find Windex was invented in 1933, but began marketed for automobile/domestic use in 1935 or 1936 (depending upon sources). We can see from the above advert Windex was clearly being offered for sale in 1935.
Just to pour more petrol on this fire, they do say "Windex" was invented in 1933 by Erich Drafahl. According to the patent filing (Sam Wise patent #3,463,735) one example formulae was " 4.0% isopropyl alcohol (a highly volatile solvent) 1% ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (a less volatile solvent), 0.1% sodium lauryl sulfate (a surfactant), 0.01% tetrasodium pyrophosphate (a water softener), 0.05% of 28% ammonia, 1% of a dye solution, and 0.01% perfume.
As for the matter of solvents; all glass/mirror cleaners contain some sort of that chemical. For one thing it helps water evaporate quickly thus leaving streak free glass or other surfaces. There are numerous recipes both in print and online for "home made" glass cleaners using nothing more than water, ammonia, alcohol, liquid dish soap and perhaps white vinegar.
