A Look Back In Time
Josephine Garis Cochrane was a socialite who became increasingly disgruntled about broken dishes. With little desire to wash the dishes herself, she thought “If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I’ll do it myself.”
With her husband leaving the earth with considerable debt in his wake, Josephine rolled up her sleeves and developed her dish-washing machine. Her patent number US355139A was received on December 28th, 1886.
Josephine’s invention was tough for the average person to own, which is why it became more commercially appealing for hotels and restaurants. She never got to see her invention rise in household popularity, but she was a leading entrepreneur starting her own company Garis-Cochrane Manufacturing Company (which later became absorbed into KitchenAid).
Inventor’s Impact
“If I knew all I know today when I began to put the dishwasher on the market,” Josephine said near the end of her life, “I never would have had the courage to start. But then, I would have missed a very wonderful experience.”
Josephine’s ambitions were restricted by social acceptance and advancement of technology (not to mention the lack of hot water in most homes at the time), yet it didn’t stop her from trying.
She may have never mustered the courage if she knew what was ahead of her, which is why we admire her bravery today and thank her a thousand times over that we don’t have to tackle the pile of dishes alone.
Learn More About Women Inventors
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