Happy Birthday to the Dishwasher

Did you know that today is the birthday of the dishwasher? According to the U.S. Census Bureau:

Friday, March 8th. The inventor of the first practical automatic dishwasher was born on this date in 1839 and was perhaps an unlikely candidate for the distinction. Josephine Cochrane was a socialite and devised the dishwasher out of some annoyance at how her domestic staff damaged her china. Awarded a patent in 1886, Cochrane sold her machines in the 1890s mainly to restaurants and hotels. Her company eventually became KitchenAid, now part of the Whirlpool Corporation. In 2011, the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey found that of the nation's more than 132 million housing units, almost 86 million had automatic dishwashers. They are sold at the nation's more than 16,000 household appliance stores.

Creative Commons license on image.