Josephine Cochrane

Josephine Cochran (later Cochrane; Garis; March 8, 1839 – August 3, 1913) was an American inventor who invented and manufactured the first successful hand-powered dishwasher. Once her patent issued on December 28, 1886, she founded Garis-Cochrane Manufacturing Company to manufacture her machines. Cochrane showed her new machine at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 where nine Garis-Cochran washers were installed in the restaurants and pavilions of the fair and was met with interest from restaurants

and hotels, where hot water access was not an issue. She won the prize for "best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work" at the Fair. Garis-Cochran Manufacturing Company, which built dishwashers, grew through a focus on hotels and other commercial customers and was renamed as Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company in 1897.

Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company became part of KitchenAid through acquisition by Hobart Manufacturing Company several years after Cochran's death in 1913. Cochran was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006 for patent 355,139 issued on December 28, 1886, for her invention of the dishwasher.