Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Listen. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I'm on a kick about the origins
Speaker 1: of everyday items lately, but it's still what my brain
Speaker 1: is drawn to. Also, let me be frank, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of a slob by nature. I fight it, I'm working
Speaker 1: on it all the time, but that makes me deeply
Speaker 1: grateful for every invention that helps me kind of keep
Speaker 1: up with my housework. I need them all in Spain.
Speaker 1: By the way, not an ad for anyone. I won't
Speaker 1: mention a specific one, but if you haven't got a
Speaker 1: steam mop, I highly recommend it. Uh. They're like magic.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're talking about today. We are talking
Speaker 1: about dishwashers, and there is one woman in particular who
Speaker 1: normally gets the credit for inventing the dishwasher, but there
Speaker 1: were other inventors trying to come up with ways to
Speaker 1: automatically take care of kitchen clean up, both before and after.
Speaker 1: Josephine Cochrane, the woman we're talking about today. We are
Speaker 1: going to talk primarily about Josephine. But we will also
Speaker 1: book nder story with other efforts to get dishes clean.
Speaker 1: So first we're going to start out with some design
Speaker 1: patents that didn't result in much actual machinery being built.
Speaker 1: So first up is Joel Hutton of Ogden, New York,
Speaker 1: who was granted the first dishwasher patent in the US
Speaker 1: on May. It's really kind of a glorified hose and
Speaker 1: bucket affair. Water would pass onto buckets that were mounted
Speaker 1: on a shaft that was turned with a crank, so
Speaker 1: it would sort of spatter the water onto dirty dishes
Speaker 1: that were in a wooden or a metal cylinder. The
Speaker 1: water had to be boiled separately and then poured onto
Speaker 1: this mechanism. This was not really functional in any kind
Speaker 1: of thorough or practical sense. The description of this dishwasher
Speaker 1: in the patent application of pretty charming, though quote the
Speaker 1: nature of my invention consists in placing the crockery or
Speaker 1: other articles of table furniture in a machine fitted to
Speaker 1: receive them and then to wash them by turning a
Speaker 1: shaft with arms and buckets so arranged as to throw
Speaker 1: the water upon the crockery with force, and thus acting
Speaker 1: upon and cleansing each and every article. In the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 1: another person, l A. Alexander, got a patent for a
Speaker 1: dishwasher with a rack that would turn the dishes on
Speaker 1: a circular spinner that would move through a tub of water.
Speaker 1: This was for like a gentle dish bather. It was
Speaker 1: not particularly effective. No. Uh So. The woman who is,
Speaker 1: as we've said, generally credited with inventing the dishwasher is
Speaker 1: Josephine Garris Cochrane. She was born Josephine Garris on March eight,
Speaker 1: eight thirty nine, in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Her father, John Garris,
Speaker 1: was a civil engineer. He worked largely when she was
Speaker 1: born with mills along the Ohio River. Her mother, Irene
Speaker 1: Fitch Garris, was the daughter of John Fitch, who was
Speaker 1: an inventor. He invented the first patented steamboat, and for
Speaker 1: a while he ran a service that connected Philadelphia to
Speaker 1: other ports with that steamboat. She never actually knew her grandfather,
Speaker 1: but her family's engineering background is often mentioned in Josephine's
Speaker 1: biography to kind of suggest that becoming an inventor was
Speaker 1: inevitable for her. But Josephine didn't really grow up showing
Speaker 1: any real inclination to follow in her grandfather or father's footsteps,
Speaker 1: John moved Josephine to Valparaiso, Indiana for his work. Her mother, Irene,
Speaker 1: had died before the move. Josephine had an older sister
Speaker 1: who had started her own life and was living in Illinois.
Speaker 1: Josephine attended a private high school in Indiana, although that
Speaker 1: particular school burned down and that ended her formal education.
Speaker 1: After that, Josephine first moved in with her sister in Shelbyville, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and then she did what a lot of young women
Speaker 1: at the time did, which was she got married. She
Speaker 1: was nineteen at the time. Her new husband was William A. Cochrane,
Speaker 1: who was twenty seven. As a young man, William had
Speaker 1: been quite entranced by the idea of striking it rich
Speaker 1: in the California gold Rush, and he had traveled to
Speaker 1: the West Coast in eighteen fifty three to seek his fortune.
Speaker 1: I did not really go as planned, and he had
Speaker 1: moved back home, and by the time he met Josephine,
Speaker 1: he had been back for roughly a year and he
Speaker 1: had started to build a successful dry goods business. He
Speaker 1: was working in the business with his uncle, so she
Speaker 1: was marrying into a pretty comfortable and stable situation. They
Speaker 1: were married on October eighteen fifty three. Josephine and William
Speaker 1: had two children. Their son, Hallie, died as a toddler,
Speaker 1: and they also had a daughter, Catherine, who lived to adulthood.
Speaker 1: One interesting detail of Josephine's married life is that she
Speaker 1: and her husband spelled their last name differently. William you
Speaker 1: c O c h r A N his name by birth,
Speaker 1: but Josephine preferred to add an E on the end
Speaker 1: of Cochrane. Some biographers say she thought this looked more
Speaker 1: fancy or refined. Her daughter Catherine used the version without
Speaker 1: the e, the idea that she just made her last
Speaker 1: name a little bit more fancy. I love it, go
Speaker 1: for it. It's like plu to flourish um. Some biographies
Speaker 1: kind of differ on whether she was actively doing this
Speaker 1: when William was still alive, but particularly after he had passed,
Speaker 1: she was definitely full time using it with the E version.
Speaker 1: Twelve years into their marriage, when William Cochrane had grown
Speaker 1: his business to a point not just of comfort but
Speaker 1: really of true wealth, he purchased a luxury home for
Speaker 1: the family in Shelbyville, Illinois. Both he and Josephine recognized
Speaker 1: that they had moved up the socioeconomic ladder, and they
Speaker 1: both worked really hard to fit into a higher class
Speaker 1: than they had grown up in, and they both wanted
Speaker 1: to move even higher. In short, Josephine aris Cochrane was
Speaker 1: at this point considered a socialite, and she really loved that.
Speaker 1: One of her greatest joys was having fancy dinner parties,
Speaker 1: and as part of this hosting hobby, she used only
Speaker 1: the finest china. The set she really prized was an
Speaker 1: heirloom originally made in the sixteen hundreds, and if you've
Speaker 1: ever washed antique china, you may know it's often delicate
Speaker 1: and easy to chip. That is exactly what happened when
Speaker 1: Josephine's house staff washed up after these parties, and Josephine
Speaker 1: was really upset by this, so much so that she
Speaker 1: would not let any of the staff wash her good
Speaker 1: china anymore. She took on that shore herself. There are
Speaker 1: debates about how long this actually went on, but it
Speaker 1: turned out she just didn't love doing an entire party's
Speaker 1: worth of dishes on her own. Who would not me?
Speaker 1: Not me either, and she thought at first that someone
Speaker 1: must have already come up with a machine designed to
Speaker 1: handle such tasks. And after she looked around for such
Speaker 1: a solution and finding that a truly functional washer had
Speaker 1: not yet been created, she has often quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: if nobody else is going to invent a dish washing machine,
Speaker 1: I'll do it myself. She is said to have sat
Speaker 1: in her home's library to think on this matter, and
Speaker 1: to have come up with a basic design after only
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes of sketching out ideas. Previous attempts at
Speaker 1: making an automatic dishwasher had not been very successful. The
Speaker 1: dishes just didn't get as clean as a person could
Speaker 1: get them themselves. There was also inconsistent cleaning in any
Speaker 1: given loads, so some items would come out okay and
Speaker 1: other ones would still be dirty. Josephine saw that one
Speaker 1: of the biggest failures of those machines was a lack
Speaker 1: of water pressure, and she intended to fix that in
Speaker 1: her version. And at this point in her life, Josephine
Speaker 1: was very well connected to a lot of wealthy people,
Speaker 1: many of whom her husband had business relationships with. William
Speaker 1: was not only a businessman, he was so very politically active.
Speaker 1: He was a prominent member of the Democratic Party in
Speaker 1: Illinois in a community that was not supportive of Lincoln.
Speaker 1: During the Civil War, William was sometimes called Judge or
Speaker 1: the Judge. He held no such position, but people called
Speaker 1: him that as a nickname because they trusted his opinion,
Speaker 1: and they often went to him for business and political advice.
Speaker 1: And the plan was that William could call on his
Speaker 1: vast network of friends and use his influence and his
Speaker 1: attachments to various business associates to assist in forming a
Speaker 1: company that could build and sell Josephine's dishwasher. Just as
Speaker 1: Josephine conceived of her design, William left for a visit
Speaker 1: to a hot spring to take the waters. She stayed
Speaker 1: behind to work on her idea, but he came right
Speaker 1: back home because his health precipitously got a lot worse.
Speaker 1: Over the course of their marriage. William had started to
Speaker 1: drink heavily, and he died of an illness that was
Speaker 1: exacerbated by alcohol miss used just two weeks after she
Speaker 1: had started on this dishwasher project. Grieving aside that was
Speaker 1: going to make it a lot harder for Josephine to
Speaker 1: get financial backing. People had trusted her husband in business,
Speaker 1: but she did not have any practical experience to expect
Speaker 1: the same confidence, and to make matters worse, after William's death,
Speaker 1: it became apparent that the lavish lifestyle that the Cochranes
Speaker 1: had been living was kind of built on a house
Speaker 1: of cards. They did make a lot of money, but
Speaker 1: apparently William also spent a lot of money, and Josephine
Speaker 1: was left with only fifteen hundred dollars and a debt
Speaker 1: that was far greater than that. She no longer had
Speaker 1: the business world favor or financial backing that she thought
Speaker 1: she was going to start this enterprise with, but that
Speaker 1: just made her really more adamant that she had to
Speaker 1: follow through on her plan because she needed an income.
Speaker 1: She did not seem interested in downsizing her life. She
Speaker 1: was forty five at this point. We will talk about
Speaker 1: how she approached making her idea into a reality after
Speaker 1: we pause for a word for one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Josephine's resolved to see her invention through the reality was,
Speaker 1: as we said before the break, stronger than ever. After
Speaker 1: her husband William had passed, she found herself without income.
Speaker 1: Her first step in testing Her design was done in
Speaker 1: her kitchen, although it involved no actual machine at all.
Speaker 1: She just wanted to make sure that she was correct
Speaker 1: in thinking that water pressure was sort of the key
Speaker 1: to this whole thing. So she assembled dishes in her
Speaker 1: sink and then proceeded to throw that was the word.
Speaker 1: She used hot soapy water onto them, and as she
Speaker 1: suspected through his trial and error, it was possible to
Speaker 1: apply enough force to the water that the dirt was
Speaker 1: rinsed from the dishes without damaging them. So then her
Speaker 1: next step was to try to build an actual working
Speaker 1: model of her machine idea. This is where George Butters
Speaker 1: enters the picture. Butters was a railroad mechanic. He worked
Speaker 1: for Illinois Central Railroad, and Josephine hired him to help
Speaker 1: build her machine since she needed somebody familiar with actual machinery.
Speaker 1: He became indispensable, not just in creating her first prototype,
Speaker 1: but just throughout the entirety of Cochrane's work. Although there
Speaker 1: isn't a lot written about their relationship, it seems like
Speaker 1: they must have gotten along great and really trusted each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she often talks about how many men discounted her, but
Speaker 1: she and Butters worked together for a long time. He
Speaker 1: ended up, you know, in a high position in her company,
Speaker 1: so clearly that was not a problem for him. The
Speaker 1: first version of the dishwasher that Cochran and Butters assembled
Speaker 1: took about two months to put together. There was some
Speaker 1: trial and error, and it sounds not the different from
Speaker 1: dishwashers today. They measured out dishes and then carefully built
Speaker 1: wire racks that would hold standard dish sizes, and then
Speaker 1: they had built it so that when an operator turned
Speaker 1: the crank on it, there was a pump that pushed
Speaker 1: streams of hot, soapy water onto the dishes, and then
Speaker 1: you did the same thing again without soap to rinse
Speaker 1: them clean. Josephine put the first finished prototype to work
Speaker 1: in her own kitchen, and soon the entire neighborhood wanted
Speaker 1: to stop by for a visit and see it in action.
Speaker 1: And words spread really quickly about Mrs Cochrane's contraption, inviting
Speaker 1: people to visit and see what she had been working on.
Speaker 1: Achieved the thing that Josephine Cochrane had thought she lost
Speaker 1: when her husband William died. It got her the support
Speaker 1: of the business community. She started collecting written testimonials from
Speaker 1: people who had come and witnessed the Garris Cochrane dishwashing machine,
Speaker 1: as she called it in action. Initially, Josephine was able
Speaker 1: to take orders from some of her friends and build
Speaker 1: them dishwashers of their own, but soon she realized this
Speaker 1: was not a very sustainable business model, not as a startup,
Speaker 1: and not at a time when the unit was just
Speaker 1: well out of the price range of most homes. Many
Speaker 1: years later, she told her reporter or quote, when it
Speaker 1: comes to buying something for the kitchen that costs seventy
Speaker 1: five dollars or a hundred dollars, a woman begins at
Speaker 1: once to figure out all the other things she could
Speaker 1: do with the money. She hates dishwashing what woman does not,
Speaker 1: but she has not learned to think of her time
Speaker 1: and comfort as worth money. Besides, she isn't the deciding
Speaker 1: factor when it comes to spending comparatively large sums of
Speaker 1: money for the house. Her husband sees that adversely, generally
Speaker 1: in the case of costly kitchen conveniences, though he will
Speaker 1: put kartometers and all that into his office every day
Speaker 1: of the week without even mentioning the fact to her.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what a charmtometer is it was
Speaker 1: like an early form of a calculator, and it was
Speaker 1: all the rage in businesses at the time. Also, obviously
Speaker 1: this is all very gendered. Uh, and a lot of
Speaker 1: this discussion is, uh, just know this is you know,
Speaker 1: kind of part and parcel of what's going on throughout
Speaker 1: one of those things that we should expect, but we
Speaker 1: also see it is so gendered in every quote. I
Speaker 1: just want to warn you going forward, there will be
Speaker 1: more of the same. Josephine filed her patent application for
Speaker 1: this machine on New Year's Eve of eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: writing in it quote, my invention relates to an improvement
Speaker 1: in machines for washing dishes, in which a continuous stream
Speaker 1: of either soap, SuDS or clear hot water is supplied
Speaker 1: to a crate holding the racks or cages containing the dishes,
Speaker 1: while the crate is rotated so as to bring the
Speaker 1: greater portion thereof under the action of the water. It
Speaker 1: took almost an entire year, but she got her patent
Speaker 1: on December six, and she was ready to launch a
Speaker 1: company with it. Since she had realized that the home
Speaker 1: market was going to be tricky to get into, she
Speaker 1: pivoted and started targeting businesses. This was something some of
Speaker 1: her community business leaders had suggested to her. For restaurants
Speaker 1: in hotels, she knew that she could make the case
Speaker 1: that it dishwasher could cut down on expenses and man
Speaker 1: hours while improving service. Josephine, from her years on the
Speaker 1: social scene, knew that the best way to make connections
Speaker 1: with decision makers in business was through introductions and referrals.
Speaker 1: She started writing everyone she knew in Chicago who might
Speaker 1: know people in the hospitality industry. Through just such a connection,
Speaker 1: she got her first commercial order from the Palmer House hotel,
Speaker 1: which had opened in eighteen seventy three and had quickly
Speaker 1: become synonymous with luxury. After that, she followed up with
Speaker 1: sales to other hotels, and sometimes she had introductions, but
Speaker 1: sometimes she didn't. She later described making a sales call
Speaker 1: to the Sherman House Hotel with no contact or introduction, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: that was almost the hardest thing I ever did. I think,
Speaker 1: crossing the great lobby of the Sherman House alone. You
Speaker 1: cannot imagine what it was like in those days, twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, for a woman to cross a hotel
Speaker 1: lobby alone. I had never been anywhere without my husband
Speaker 1: or father. The lobby seemed a mile wine. I thought
Speaker 1: I should faint at every step, but I didn't, and
Speaker 1: I got an eight hundred dollar order as my reward.
Speaker 1: Those first orders have been placed in seven by the
Speaker 1: next year. The Garris Cochrane dish washing machine Company offered
Speaker 1: two different models. The smaller of the two was still
Speaker 1: hand cranked, and it pumped soapy water onto the dishes
Speaker 1: through the motion of the operator. To rinse the dishes
Speaker 1: that you had to pour clean hot water over them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the lower end. The second model was larger
Speaker 1: and it had the option to be motorized. It was
Speaker 1: much easier for anyone of any size to operate, whereas
Speaker 1: the basic model required some strength to provide enough power
Speaker 1: to wash hundreds of dishes at once. Both of these
Speaker 1: machines were touted as washing as many as two hundred
Speaker 1: forty dishes in only two minutes. I have a dishwasher.
Speaker 1: It takes much longer than that. Part of me is like,
Speaker 1: what have we lost. Both of these models offered by
Speaker 1: Cochran's company could be built to custom specifications to fit
Speaker 1: in any kitchen building. To spec was not something that
Speaker 1: Cochrane and Butters were doing on their own and Josephine's
Speaker 1: shed obviously that they had support from businessmen within the
Speaker 1: community that was largely moral support, not financial, so they
Speaker 1: didn't have the capital to open their own manufacturing facilities
Speaker 1: and had to work with a contractor. This was deeply
Speaker 1: frustrating for Josephine, who found that even though she invented
Speaker 1: the machine and held the patent, none of the men
Speaker 1: involved wanted to listen to her. Additionally, there was a
Speaker 1: firm in between her and the manufacturer, and that seemed
Speaker 1: to be making most of the money. She later said
Speaker 1: of this period, quote, women are inventive, the common opinion
Speaker 1: to the contrary. Notwithstanding, you see, we are not given
Speaker 1: a mechanical education, and that is a great handicap. It
Speaker 1: was to me, not in the way you suppose. However,
Speaker 1: I couldn't get men to do the things I wanted
Speaker 1: in my way until they had tried and failed on
Speaker 1: their own, and that was costly for me. They knew
Speaker 1: I knew nothing academically about mechanics, and they insisted on
Speaker 1: having their own way with my invention until they convinced
Speaker 1: themselves my way was better. No matter how I had
Speaker 1: arrived at it. One of her friends, who was a businessman,
Speaker 1: thought that she just needed to make more pitches to
Speaker 1: investors to gain capital so she could be a little
Speaker 1: more independent, and he actually put together a pitch package
Speaker 1: for her and went out to other members of the
Speaker 1: business community to try to drum up money himself, but
Speaker 1: it never really gained much traction. There were a few
Speaker 1: potential investors who showed interest, but to echo what she
Speaker 1: said in that quote Tracy just read, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of them that said they would only invest if
Speaker 1: Cochrane stepped aside as head of the company and let
Speaker 1: a man run the business. That was not going to happen. Similarly,
Speaker 1: campaign started by women to try to support a woman
Speaker 1: inventor didn't garner the hoped for in lucks of money.
Speaker 1: There were some ads placed in women's magazines that were like,
Speaker 1: we should be supporting this other woman, but it never
Speaker 1: really got any kind of cash flow. Josephine was tenacious, though,
Speaker 1: and she kept going as she had and making her
Speaker 1: visits to hotels and restaurants and taking orders. Cochrane had
Speaker 1: a breakthrough in EE. At the same time, many other
Speaker 1: business people found themselves in an economic crisis during the
Speaker 1: Panic of eighteen. We'll talk about the World's Columbian Exposition
Speaker 1: after we take a little sponsor break. In the World's
Speaker 1: Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago. It ran from May
Speaker 1: to October that year, and in Machinery Hall, Josephine's dishwashing
Speaker 1: machine was on display. There were demonstrations of its effectiveness
Speaker 1: as two hundred dishes at a time were loaded into
Speaker 1: it and then washed in that two in its cycle.
Speaker 1: The garris Cochrane machine drew crowds. People marveled that this invention,
Speaker 1: invented by a woman, could so easily handle a job
Speaker 1: that every household needed. But the restaurant capabilities of the
Speaker 1: machine were also on display, not just on the show floor,
Speaker 1: but throughout the expo. There was a total of ten
Speaker 1: garris Cochrane machines at the expo because in addition to
Speaker 1: the one on the show floor, Josephine had arranged for
Speaker 1: the fair's nine large restaurants to use them as well,
Speaker 1: which is so smart. The garris Cochrane dish washing machine
Speaker 1: won the judge's highest award at the fair, with the
Speaker 1: prize for Best Mechanical Construction Durability and adaptation to its
Speaker 1: line of work. That recognition was soon parlayed into advertising copy.
Speaker 1: One advertising flyer for the dishwasher that came out shortly
Speaker 1: after this touted quote the great domestic problem solved the
Speaker 1: only machine used at World's Fair, and it goes on
Speaker 1: to say, quote, attention, hotel in Steward's restaurants and boarding housekeepers,
Speaker 1: increase your profits and safe space by using a Garris
Speaker 1: Cochrane dishwashing machine. The last block of text in the flyer,
Speaker 1: which has a large detailed illustration of the machine, is
Speaker 1: at central focal point Warren's quote, Every enterprising and progressive
Speaker 1: hotel man should investigate this machine. In November of the
Speaker 1: newspaper The Dispatch of Muline, Illinois ran an article about
Speaker 1: Josephine and it's woman's World section. Though she's lauded for
Speaker 1: her inventiveness, it seems the paper got almost everything else
Speaker 1: about her wrong, right down to her name. It opens
Speaker 1: with quote, few people living in park manor one of
Speaker 1: Chicago's pretty suburbs, are aware that the quiet little woman
Speaker 1: living in an unostentatious manner at Anthony Avenue is Mrs
Speaker 1: Elizabeth garris Cochrane, a name familiar to inventors the world over.
Speaker 1: Never mind the weirdness of an address being given out
Speaker 1: some public, which is like way more common in newspapers
Speaker 1: of this era than it would be for now. For sure,
Speaker 1: the fact that she's called Elizabeth like what this article
Speaker 1: goes on to say that she came up with this
Speaker 1: idea after she was widowed, and it gets additional facts wrong.
Speaker 1: So even though her invention had been really well received,
Speaker 1: it seems that to some degree to some people, she
Speaker 1: was still just seen as a novelty more than as
Speaker 1: an inventor and a businesswoman. I'm gonna talk more about
Speaker 1: that article in our Friday. Behind the scenes sounds like
Speaker 1: a mess. It's a mess, and I have some theories.
Speaker 1: Um though she was not taken serious as seriously as
Speaker 1: she would have liked. Frankly, Josephine Cochrane had other issues
Speaker 1: at this point. The one that was really taking up
Speaker 1: her time was the onslaught of copycat machines that sprang
Speaker 1: up after she became so well known from the Expo success.
Speaker 1: Josephine defended her patent ardently. She was very quick to
Speaker 1: go after anyone infringing on it. But that was taking
Speaker 1: up a lot of time. By the end of the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, Josephine's business had grown to the point that
Speaker 1: she was getting busier than ever at an age when
Speaker 1: most people at the time might be retiring. In her fifties,
Speaker 1: she was traveling all over the country to visit order
Speaker 1: sites to ensure that the Garris Cochrane dishwashers were properly
Speaker 1: installed for her customers. Over the course of just seven
Speaker 1: years since her idea and since being widowed, she had
Speaker 1: built not just her dishwasher but her entire career. The
Speaker 1: hotels who bought her machines spoke really highly of them.
Speaker 1: The ones that had been on display at the expo
Speaker 1: had performed really well, and that continued to be the case.
Speaker 1: This wasn't like a situation of that test model worked,
Speaker 1: but everything else has been a mess. Hotels reported that
Speaker 1: they didn't need as many people on dishwashing duties, so
Speaker 1: they either didn't need as much staff or they could
Speaker 1: allocate staff to other more important activities. Many also reported
Speaker 1: that they had less loss through breakage than they had
Speaker 1: with just hand washing. There was also the hygiene benefit
Speaker 1: of the dish is not just being cleaned, but sanitized
Speaker 1: due to the high tempts of the water that was used.
Speaker 1: That particular benefit actually helped expand the business because more
Speaker 1: institutions like hospitals adopted the Garris Cochrane dishwasher. Throughout all
Speaker 1: of this, Cochrane had an eye on becoming more independent
Speaker 1: in her work as well. She had been putting money aside,
Speaker 1: and by she had saved enough to open her own
Speaker 1: factory and finally be out from under the manufacturing contracts
Speaker 1: that she disliked so much. George Butters headed up the
Speaker 1: operation as chief machinist and foreman. They set the factory
Speaker 1: up in a former schoolhouse. The employees answered only to
Speaker 1: Josephine and George, and she no longer had to wade
Speaker 1: through scores of other people to get things done or
Speaker 1: to make changes. Yeah, there's not a lot that I
Speaker 1: could find written about it, but it sounds like her
Speaker 1: factory was definitely um very big on mutual respect, Like
Speaker 1: I trust these people who work for me, and in return,
Speaker 1: they trust me when I say we need to change something,
Speaker 1: which sounds sort of idyllic. I don't know how truthful
Speaker 1: those accounts are, but it sounds great. She also shifted
Speaker 1: the name of the company to Cochrane's Crescent Washing Machine Company.
Speaker 1: When she opened that factory, she tried once again to
Speaker 1: get into the home consumer market. She had tried to
Speaker 1: manage production in ways that would reduce costs, but that
Speaker 1: still stayed well beyond what most families could afford, and
Speaker 1: the ones that neared affordability tended to lose a lot
Speaker 1: of the features that made them effective. Additionally, most homes
Speaker 1: at this point just did not have plumbing capable of
Speaker 1: supporting a built in washing machine. The marketing efforts tried
Speaker 1: to make use of things like touting the sanitation benefits,
Speaker 1: as well as the fact that you can simply use
Speaker 1: it to store dirty dishes out of sight until you
Speaker 1: were ready to run aload, but the home market remained elusive,
Speaker 1: and the company's primary customers continued to be hotels, restaurants, hospitals,
Speaker 1: and schools. In nineteen well, Cochrane wanted to expand her
Speaker 1: business even more. She made a trip to New York
Speaker 1: to make sales calls at several big hotels and also
Speaker 1: sold several machines to the Lord and Taylor Department Store
Speaker 1: for its in house restaurants. She also promoted the company
Speaker 1: through interviews. She was in her seventies at this point
Speaker 1: and still working full time. She told a reporter that
Speaker 1: year quote, if I knew all I knew today, when
Speaker 1: I began to put the dishwasher on the market, I
Speaker 1: never would have had the courage to start. But then
Speaker 1: I would have missed a very wonderful experience. But though
Speaker 1: she may have found her work a wonderful experience and
Speaker 1: very fulfilling, it was also taking a toll. Like we said,
Speaker 1: she was in her seventies, and like doing all this travel,
Speaker 1: she was traveling also outside the country in some cases,
Speaker 1: to these to these visit sites to make sales calls.
Speaker 1: And in is a consequence of all of this, Josephine
Speaker 1: likely experienced a stroke. She had something happened after which
Speaker 1: she was paralyzed. Her doctor recorded her condition as being
Speaker 1: the result of nervous exhaustion. She never recovered and died
Speaker 1: on August third, nineteen thirteen. Josephine's last patent, which she
Speaker 1: had applied for to reflect updates to her design, was
Speaker 1: awarded posthumously in nineteen seventeen. Josephine's company continued after her death,
Speaker 1: and it still does as part of a larger company.
Speaker 1: In nine, Crescent was acquired by Hobart Manufacturing company. Dishwashers
Speaker 1: made after the acquisition carried the brand name Kitchen Aide,
Speaker 1: and then Kitchen Aide became part of Whirlpool in nineteen six,
Speaker 1: still going strong uh and they still mentioned Josephine and
Speaker 1: in their founding So we mentioned that during her work
Speaker 1: with her company, Josephine defended her patent with Gusto. But
Speaker 1: there were other inventors and companies also just working on
Speaker 1: their own models and slightly different approaches at the same
Speaker 1: time that cochrane was building her company. In nineteen for example,
Speaker 1: the Walker Company offered a small hand crank dishwasher for
Speaker 1: home use for the low price of twenty dollars. But
Speaker 1: that was pretty tiny though. It was kind of the
Speaker 1: size of a large stewing pot on four legs, and
Speaker 1: because it was strictly handpowered, it didn't offer the level
Speaker 1: of pressure spraying and it didn't have any real automation.
Speaker 1: Josephine did not hold a patent overseas, and new dishwasher
Speaker 1: started popping up in Europe in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: In four a new dishwasher with a rotating sprayer was
Speaker 1: developed by William Howard. Levin's had racks that were a
Speaker 1: lot like what listeners are probably accustomed to seeing, and
Speaker 1: a rotating sprayer. Levin's filed for European patents, but his
Speaker 1: dishwasher doesn't appear to have ever gone into production, and
Speaker 1: German manufacturer Mela brought their first electric dishwasher to the
Speaker 1: European market in Mila, named for one of its founders, Carl.
Speaker 1: Mila made a lot of different mechanical home goods, including
Speaker 1: butter churns, washing machines, and even motor cars. Melas still
Speaker 1: exists and continues to manufacture a wide range of home appliances,
Speaker 1: including dishwashers. In the nineteen fifties, as well plumbed homes
Speaker 1: came to be commonplace, so did home dishwashers. They were
Speaker 1: still considered a luxury item, though it took another twenty
Speaker 1: years before home dishwashers became fairly standard in home kitchens,
Speaker 1: but even now not every home has one. One of
Speaker 1: my best friends does not have a dishwasher. In the teens,
Speaker 1: it was estimated that about seventy five percent of homes
Speaker 1: in the United States had automatic dishwashers. Josephine Garris Cochrane
Speaker 1: was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. Today, the site of the shed
Speaker 1: where she built her first dishwasher with George Butters has
Speaker 1: a historical marker which was placed there in n It reads,
Speaker 1: in part quote in a wood shed located at the
Speaker 1: rear of this site. In eighteen eighty six, Mrs Josephine
Speaker 1: Garris Cochrane eighteen thirty nine to thirteen invented one of
Speaker 1: the first mechanical dishwashers ever built. Over the years, the
Speaker 1: home itself changed hands and it was for a while
Speaker 1: a rental property that had been split into two units.
Speaker 1: Was purchased by a family who intends to restore it,
Speaker 1: and kitchen Ade gave them a new dishwasher to help
Speaker 1: with that renovation. That was I read that in a
Speaker 1: press release from the Whirlpool website, so I thought it
Speaker 1: was kind of cute dishwashers. Thank you Josephine and all
Speaker 1: other engineers and inventors who have worked on perfecting the dishwasher,
Speaker 1: because I sure like it. I have listener mail that
Speaker 1: is about another one of our invention episodes. This listener
Speaker 1: mail tickled me because its title is how Many Zippers
Speaker 1: is too Many? Which sounds a little bit like a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties documentary educational film how Many Zippers? But it
Speaker 1: is not. It is from our listeners, Zia, and it
Speaker 1: is very charming. She writes. I have only recently caught
Speaker 1: up on stuff you missed in history class episodes, so
Speaker 1: I heard the Zippers episode on the day it am out.
Speaker 1: I wonder about the early efforts of home sewers to
Speaker 1: sew in a zipper for the first time. My first
Speaker 1: attempts required multiple tries and probably some frustrated tears and cursing.
Speaker 1: I now teach sewing to elementary and middle school students,
Speaker 1: and sewing in a zipper is one of the skills
Speaker 1: we practice. They do pretty well, no cursing. To have
Speaker 1: a supply of zippers, I try to source them cheap
Speaker 1: or free. Recently, I replied to an ad for free
Speaker 1: zippers from a business that was closing, and it said
Speaker 1: quote must take all. It turned out to be about
Speaker 1: five thousand zippers. Am I exaggerating? I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: So when your Zipper episode came out, it was perfect
Speaker 1: for listening while I worked on my project assorting all
Speaker 1: of these zippers by type, color, length, and also brand.
Speaker 1: I was surprised to learn that Talent is the brand
Speaker 1: that evolved from the original, and not y k K,
Speaker 1: which is so ubiquitous. I don't know what I will
Speaker 1: do with this massive quantity of zippers, but I think
Speaker 1: I have enough for my classes. I love the show
Speaker 1: and the wide variety of topics, Zia. I love this
Speaker 1: because I too love a freebee. And if you are
Speaker 1: like me and you sew a lot, really, if you
Speaker 1: do anything a lot and people know it, they tend
Speaker 1: to always dump a lot of stuff on you. Like
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times someone has contacted
Speaker 1: me and said, hey, my aunt or grandmother passed away
Speaker 1: and they have a sewing room full of things. Do
Speaker 1: you want it? And whether I do or not, I'll
Speaker 1: just go sure because I can sort through it and
Speaker 1: I know what's worthwhile and what's and it saves the
Speaker 1: family one more thing to work through. Um. I also
Speaker 1: will say I got one of my favorite sewing implements
Speaker 1: in a very fun way, which is that um it
Speaker 1: is also sad. I used to work for a long
Speaker 1: time in a hair salon. We had regular clients and
Speaker 1: when one of them passed, she specifically left me her
Speaker 1: sewing mannequin, and I just thought that was the greatest
Speaker 1: thing of all time. I still have it. I'll have
Speaker 1: it forever. Um anyway sewing supplies sometimes freebees come in
Speaker 1: bulk um zeeah. I also want to make sure I
Speaker 1: thank you for being an educator and for teaching kids
Speaker 1: to sew. I was that kid that did not want
Speaker 1: anyone to teach me, so I would have been absolutely
Speaker 1: a nightmare. But I love that that people are still
Speaker 1: learning that skill because it's one that not as many
Speaker 1: people do as they used to, and I feel like
Speaker 1: it's very useful. You don't have to be creating entire
Speaker 1: wardrobes to get the benefit of knowing how to sew. Um,
Speaker 1: So more sewers, please, I'm all for it. If you
Speaker 1: would like to write to us about your thousands of
Speaker 1: zippers or thousands of something else or anything else you'd like,
Speaker 1: you could do that at History Podcast at i heeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. You can also find us on social
Speaker 1: media as Missed in History, And if you haven't subscribed
Speaker 1: yet and you would like to, that is so simple.
Speaker 1: You can do it on the I Heart radio app
Speaker 1: or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. H