Not just a pretty face

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God bless Josephine Cochrane, inventor of the first working practical automatic dishwasher. And bless her clumsy servants for badly chipping her expensive 17th century heirloom China tableware. Without then, Josephine might have stuck to embroidery or taken up golf. Who knows?

Anyways, tired with the maids, she did the washing-up herself. Up to her elbows in soap suds, she wondered why someone hadn’t devised a decent dish cleaning machine to put an end to her misery. After all, this was the late 19th century! Before her, in 1850, Joel Houghton was given a patent, but his crude contraption was ineffective. So, Josephine, a highly respectable and wealthy American socialite, declared in utter disgust:

“If nobody gets it together to invent a dishwasher, I’ll do it myself. Yes, I can!”

And one glorious day in 1886, the dishwasher was born. Bravo Jo!

                                     In le bicarbonate à tout faire.