Dishwashers are quite common appliances in most homes nowadays, but things weren't always like that. Actually, before the second half of the nineteenth century, people didn't even fathomed that there could be a machine to wash their dishes for them.

 

History of the dishwasher

 

Everything changed thanks to Joel Houghton, who patented a wooden machine with a hand-turned wheel that splashed water on dishes, in 1850. This was hardly a workable machine, but it was the first patent. This was just the beginning, though, and advancements came pretty fast. Thus, in 1865, L.A. Alexander obtained a patent for a device that used a hand crank and gearing to spin a rack of dishes through the dishwater. Again, this didn't do to much to clean dirty dishes.

 

In 1886, Josephine Cochrane (granddaughter of John Fitch, the inventor of the steamboat) proclaims in disgust "If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I'll do it myself."And she did, Cochrane invented the first practical dishwasher. She was a rich woman who had a lot of dinner parties. She had servants to wash her dishes but she wanted a machine that could do the job faster without breaking so many. So, she built a dishwasher herself!

 

First, she measured her dishes and then built wire compartments - each specially designed to fit plates, cups, and saucers. The compartments fit in a wheel that lay flat inside a copper boiler. A motor turned the wheel, while hot soapy water squirted up from the boiler and rained down on the dishes. She unveiled her invention at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and won its highest award.

 

Cochrane's friends liked her dishwasher, and soon, Mrs. Cochrane was getting orders for the machine from restaurants and hotels around Illinois. She patented the design and went into production. Her company is now the well-known upscale kitchenware corporation KitchenAid. Other companies made dishwashers for restaurants and caterers that were powered by steam. They worked by passing the dirty dishes under jets of hot water using a conveyor belt or spinning basket which were inefficient. It was not until the 1950s, when dishwashers became cheaper and smaller, that they caught on with the general public.

 

Models installed with permanent plumbing arrived in the 1920s. In 1937, William Howard Livens invented a small dishwasher suitable for home. It had all the features of a modern dishwasher, including a front door for loading, a wire rack to hold crockery and a rotating sprayer. Electric drying elements were added in 1940.

Adoption was greatest at first in commercial environments, but by the 1970s dishwashers had become commonplace in domestic residences in the US.

 

Brands

 

There are several brands that have supplied people with dishwashers over the years, which can be categorized as high-end, midrange and low-end brands. The first categories comprise Fisher & Paykel (revolutionized the dish washing market with the creation of the DishDrawer), KitchenAid (featuring custom panel kits, hard food disposals, and stainless steel tubs, manufactured by Whirlpool Corporation), Bosch (featuring stainless steel tubs and self-cleaning filtration), Kenmore Elite (featuring adjustable upper racks, stainless steel tubs, and TurboZone - a bank of jets in the back of the dishwasher designed especially for potscrubbing - manufactured by Whirlpool Corporation), GE Monogram, GE Profile and Jenn-Air.

 

While the midrange sector of the market is taken by brands like Kenmore (featuring plastic tubs and hard food disposals), Maytag (featuring plastic and stainless steel tubs, tiered racks, and numerous additional side racks) and Whirlpool (featuring plastic tubs, and relocatable in-door utensil racks), Frigidaire is a low-end brand whose dishwashers have made life easier for a lot of people.

 

Dishwashers differ in sizes, shapes and even functionality, but no matter the large variety, new models appear constantly, featuring developments that never cease to amaze us. It's not like dishwashers have turned into sci-fi home appliances, at least not yet, but taking into account the speed with which technology advances it won't be long until that happens.