The dishwasher was made in America, though there is some dispute over who did it. That’s because there are two rival American inventors of the dishwasher, with dueling patents. Credit comes down to which model of creation you find more persuasive: genius or tinkering.
The genius was a man named Joel Houghton, who invented and patented a mechanical dishwasher in 1850. The tinkerer was a socialite and widow named Josephine Cochrane. Though she consulted Houghton’s design and had help with her own model, it was arguably her insights and persistence that made dishwashers a success.
The perhaps slightly embellished sales pitch went that after a party in Cochrane’s home in the 1870s, she noticed that far too many of her dishes were chipped from servants
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