In a World Post-Quarantine: Ask What Your Dishwasher Can Do For You

I don’t like dishes, I whined in a British accent at the conclusion of a family dinner at some point in my childhood. I’ve never been able to live this down. As a young adult the phrase is still used to signify the conclusion of a meal, the point in time when we all must trudge the fifteen steps from our dining room chairs to the kitchen to set our plates down, our Jack Russell enthusiastically following the procession and hoping to get a hand out.

As a cooking enthusiast in my early twenties, I’ve lived in several small apartments during college. I’ve even coined the term dish theory to describe the strategic approach to preparing food. The goal is to minimize the number of dishes used while preparing a meal and maintaining sanitary kitchen practices. For example, if a recipe calls for ¼ teaspoon of salt, just shake it in and save the measuring spoon: dish theory. This began during the time when I was without a dishwasher in Stanford apartment style housing junior year. Using the same grody sponge on my salad bowl and on my scrambled egg pan was nauseating after the third use. Though this experience did not reform my peculiar perspective on dishes, I am nevertheless grateful for the invention of a dishwasher.

Our story begins when Josephine Garis married William A. Cochrane in 1858. She was 19 years old and the grand-daughter of John Fitch, a pioneer in steamboat engineering. The two settled their family into a staffed mansion in Shelbyville, Illinois, and Josephine took to her wifely duty of becoming a socialite. Frustrated by the chips in family heirloom China, she took to washing the dishes herself. To Josephine it lacked the domestic relaxation that had sold the practice to so many housewives, so she invented a machine of her own.

Hand cranked versions of a dishwasher had been introduced and patented by LA Alexander and Joel Houghton in 1865 and 1850 respectively. Requiring an attendant, the designs failed to catch on. Cochrane took a different approach, measuring dishes and creating wire compartments and racks designed for each piece of kitchenware. Her husband passed aways soon after her first crude prototype, an automated improvement from her antiquated predecessors. He left a pile of debt and only $1,500 to Josephine, turning her hobbyist convenience into a necessity.

Pressurized, hot, soapy water jets and a motor powered wheel spinning in the bottom of the contraption earned her 1886 iteration of the dishwasher a patent under her newly minted company, Garis-Cochran Manufacturing. The Women’s Journal reported in August 1889 that

“It will prove as great a revolution in the domestic department as the sewing-machine has been to the seamstress, and maybe more so, because no one will put tucks and ruffles on Wedgewood or china.”

Beyond its significance to the housewife subset, the Garis-Cochran dishwasher, including the rack and water jet system, debuted at the 1893 Chicago World Fair and won the highest award of the best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work, proving its ability to hold its own among mechanical innovations of the time.

With newfound attention and appeal, Garis-Cochran (renamed to be Cochran’s Crescent Washing Machine Company in 1897) began selling its first machines to restaurants and hotels, where the volume of dishes and breakage was a continuous and costly concern. Dishwashers today still use a modernized version of the pressurized water jet model, attributed to Josephine Cochran. The core functions of dishwashers remain largely unchanged.

Cochran passed in 1913 before witnessing the dishwasher’s mainstream debut, with hot water not readily available in American homes, a steep price point, and shifting attitudes about housework not occurring until later in the 20th century. Cochran’s Crescent Washing Machine Company was sold to Hobart Manufacturing in 1926, collaborating with the foodservice motor company and broadening her model to become the standard for industrial foodservice and consumers via Hobart’s KitchenAid division.

KitchenAid was started in 1919 by the Hobart Corporation to produce one industrial appliance: the H5 stand mixer. Shifting its production from the H5, a staple for commercial settings and bakeries, KitchenAid found its edge in 1937 with Egmont Arens’ reframe of the stand mixer to fit a captivating low-cost consumer market.

With an attention to aesthetics and efficiency, the world of consumer appliances diminished any charm or nostalgia tied to domestic work. The 1949 release of the KitchenAid in-home dishwasher, the KD-10, became the first residential dishwasher to go to market using Cochran’s patented pressurized water jets, in contrast to other residential dishwashers. It was available in pink and white. At this point in this story, Miele had released an electric household model in Europe in 1929.

And thus the first consumer dishwasher was released. Basins still fill with water that is then heated and pumped into water jets in the bottom of the machine that spew soapy water onto our ceramic cookware. In the modern context, they’re more sustainable and more efficient than hand-washing (if you choose to forego heat dry and pre-rinse features). Energy Star certifications, granted by the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency starting in 1992, have popularized energy and water efficiency as well.

The dishwashers themselves have been optimized within their existing forms, an oven-sized installation appliance that can hold approximately twelve place settings. Though thankful for this kitchen behemoth in quarantine, for regular use in small kitchens it seems excessive and perhaps a little dated. Innovation has made water jets and heating systems efficient, yet the machines still fill the same frame under our countertops, making the same low hum of rushing water from our pipes.

Heatworks has been one of the few companies in recent years to question the form and function of dishwashers for small homes and apartments, unlike our previous generation that aspired to own a home, one that would reasonably fit a standard sized dishwasher.

The Tetra Countertop dishwasher is set to release for pre-order in 2020 (delayed after first publicizing the product in 2018, presumably delayed further by COVID). Though the sleek plastic box consumes valuable counter space (it’s about the size of a toaster), it contains interchangeable dish racks that can hold about two place settings. It requires half a gallon of water per 10 minute cycle that users are expected to add, requiring no connection to plumbing. It also removes the black-box effect of dishwashers allowing users to observe the machine like a fish tank (don’t pretend you’ve never been curious about what’s actually happening behind that stainless steel dishwasher door).

This glint of innovation is some of the first to come to market that defies the norms of a traditional dishwasher. Quarantine has required us to question the functionality of our kitchens, and demand efficient appliances to suit our aspirational in small spaces.

Sources:

Eschner, Kat. “This Time-Saving Patent Paved the Way for the Modern Dishwasher.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 28 Dec. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/time-saving-patent-paved-way-modern-dishwasher-180967656/.

Hilpern, Kate. “The Secret History Of: The Dishwasher.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 22 Oct. 2011, www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-secret-history-of-the-dishwasher-2119320.html.

Lemelson-MIT. “Josephine Cochrane.” Lemelson-MIT Program, lemelson.mit.edu/resources/josephine-cochrane.

“KitchenAid Brand’s History.” KitchenAid, 2019, www.kitchenaid.com/100year/history.html#section-1949.

Ram, Jocelyn, and Eric Atkisson. “‘I’ll Do It Myself.’” United States Patent and Trademark Office — An Agency of the Department of Commerce, 9 Mar. 2020, www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/journeys-innovation/historical-stories/ill-do-it-myself.