{"id":7347,"date":"2026-09-03T12:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T02:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/?p=7347"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T02:14:09","slug":"josephine-cochrane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/women-who-built-the-future\/josephine-cochrane\/","title":{"rendered":"JOSEPHINE COCHRANE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>\u201cIF NOBODY ELSE IS GOING TO INVENT IT, I'LL DO IT MYSELF.\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes invention begins with an enormous scientific problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes it begins because people keep breaking your good china.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Josephine Garis Cochran was born in Ohio in 1841 and later lived in Illinois, where she entertained regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She owned expensive dishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And apparently wasn't terribly impressed when they were chipped while being washed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So she began thinking about a better way to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her answer was a mechanical dishwasher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cochran designed a system that held dishes securely while <strong>pressurised water cleaned them<\/strong>, rather than relying on somebody scrubbing them by hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She was granted a US patent for her dishwasher in <strong>1886<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Josephine did something else that's particularly important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She didn't merely invent her machine and hand the idea to somebody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>She went into business.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She established a company to manufacture and market her invention and found a particularly receptive market among commercial kitchens, hotels and restaurants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her business eventually became connected with the company we know today as KitchenAid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The National Inventors Hall of Fame credits Josephine Cochran with developing the <strong>first practical dishwasher<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is easy to look at an everyday machine and forget that somebody had to imagine it first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somebody had to design it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somebody had to build it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And somebody had to convince people to buy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this case, that somebody was a woman in Victorian America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Women Who Built the Future \u2014 Steampunk Australia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leading to <strong>Wrinkles in the Fabric with Dr Kathryn Spurling<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Science isn't always about discovering distant galaxies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes it's looking at an annoying problem in your own house and deciding:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Fine. I'll fix it myself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The National Inventors Hall of Fame credits Cochran with the first practical dishwasher, her 1886 patent and the company she created to manufacture and market it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fine. I&#8217;ll invent it myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-women-who-built-the-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7349,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347\/revisions\/7349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}