Great inventions

Today's busy household can thank an independent-minded American woman for inventing the dishwasher in the 1880s.

The first attempt at a machine was patented in 1850 by Joel Houghton. It was a hand-powered wooden device with a wheel that distributed water over the dishes inside - but it didn't do a very good job.

It was not until 1886 that the first automatic dishwasher as we know it was made by Josephine Cochran in Shelbyville, Illinois.

Mrs Cochran, 44, a socialite, was frustrated with careless servants chipping her china, so she conceived a dishwasher to do the job for her.

In her woodshed she designed wire holders for plates, cups or saucers, which were placed in a copper boiler. A motor turned the barrel while hot, soapy water was splashed over the dishes.

Her invention won the highest award at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago and was later sold to hotels and restaurants.

Mrs Cochran, whose grandfather, John Fitch, invented the steamboat in 1786, died in 1913.

The firm she founded was eventually absorbed by the KitchenAid company and her updated machine was given plumbing in the 1920s and drying elements in the 1940s.

It became a common household appliance in the 1970s.

Auckland University technology historian Dr Ruth Barton says a dishwasher doesn't save a housewife's time, but the work often done by children or husbands can now be done by one person.

"Washing and drying dishes could have been a sociable activity in the past; now it seldom is," she said.

Fisher & Paykel sells about 180,000 dishwashers around the world each year.

The company was founded in Auckland in 1934 by Sir Woolf Fisher and Maurice Paykel.