Who invented the first practical dishwasher?

Some inventions come from laboratories. Some come from garages. The dishwasher came from a dinner party, a box of precious plates, and one woman’s firm belief that if nobody else was going to build a better way to wash dishes, she would have to do it herself.

The short answer

Josephine Cochrane received US Patent 355,139 for her dishwashing machine on 28 December 1886. Others had tried before her, but her machine was the first to really work, and her company eventually became part of the story of KitchenAid.

The real story

Josephine Garis was born in Ohio in 1839 and married William Cochran in 1858. The couple entertained, and she owned a set of heirloom china she loved. After dinners, the hand-washing kept chipping it. She wanted a machine that could wash dishes faster than her servants could, and without breaking them.

Then life got harder. Her husband died in 1883, leaving her with debts and very little money. The dishwasher stopped being a hobby and became a business plan.

Her design was clever. She measured her plates, cups and saucers and built wire compartments to hold each one snugly. The racks sat on a wheel inside a boiler, and as the wheel turned, hot soapy water sprayed over the dishes. Earlier machines, such as a hand-cranked device Joel Houghton patented in 1850, relied on splashing or scrubbing and did not work well. Spraying water at dishes held still in racks is essentially how dishwashers still work.

Homes in the 1880s were not ready for it. Many lacked enough hot water, and the machine was large. So Cochrane sold to hotels and restaurants, where mountains of dishes and broken crockery cost real money. At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago her machine won an award for its mechanical construction and durability, and orders followed.

She died in 1913. Her company was sold in 1926 to the business that became KitchenAid, which launched a home dishwasher based on her design in 1949. Home dishwashers only really caught on in the 1950s. In 2006 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Why people get it wrong

Dishwashers feel like a product of the mid-century appliance boom, sitting next to fridges and washing machines in glossy 1950s adverts. That is when most families first owned one, so it is natural to assume that is when, and where, the invention came from. A 19th-century woman with a chipped teacup does not fit the picture, which is exactly why her story was overlooked for so long.

“She built the whole thing to save her good plates. I can relate. I’ve spent my life under tables trying not to get chipped myself.”