Josephine Cochran is the inventor of the dishwasher. However, she was not the first one to patent it. In 1850, a man patented a wooden machine with a hand-turned wheel that would splash dishes with water. There was just one problem – it didn’t work! In the 1860s, another man improved the device by adding a geared mechanism that allowed racked dishes to be spun through a tub of water. Again, it wasn’t practical.
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Fast forward to 1886, when Josephine invented the first dishwasher that was practical, effective, and worked! Josephine started working on the dishwasher in a shed behind her house and received her patent for her dishwasher, which used water pressure instead of scrubbers to clean dishes, on December 28, 1886.
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It’s no surprise that Josephine was so creative – her father was a civil engineer and her grandfather was an inventor who was awarded a steamboat patent!
