The history
175 years from a hand-cranked wooden tub to quiet machines that wash a whole dinner with a bucket of water.
Washing dishes is one of the oldest chores, and for most of history it was done by hand, mostly by women. In 1850 an American inventor patented a wooden tub with a wheel you turned to splash water, and in 1886 Josephine Cochrane built the first machine that really worked, using jets of hot water instead of scrubbing. It took almost another century, plus hot water on tap, electric motors, special detergents and clever sensors, before dishwashers became common in homes. Today the best ones wash a full load with less water than a single sink of washing up.
1850
Dishwasher patent
Joel Houghton, USA
1886
Dishwasher that cleaned with water pressure
Josephine Cochrane, USA
1924
Home dishwasher with front door, rack and rotating sprayer
William Howard Livens, England
1929
Electric dishwasher in Europe
Miele, Germany
1954
Automatic portable dishwasher (GE's claim)
GE Mobile Maid, USA
1960
Fully automatic front-loader with rotating spray arms (Miele's claim)
Miele G 10, Germany
1960
Dishwasher in Japan
Matsushita (National) MR-500, Japan
2008
Zeolite drying
BSH (Bosch and Siemens), Germany
1850 – 1900
Inventors patent wooden tubs with handles and paddles. Josephine Cochrane swaps scrubbing for jets of water and sells her machines to hotels and restaurants.
1850
14 May 1850
Houghton won US patent 7,365 for a ‘table furniture cleaning machine’. It was a wooden tub with a rack for dishes and a paddle wheel that you turned by hand to throw hot water over them. It could not really replace scrubbing.
Why it mattered. It was the first time anyone patented the idea of a machine that splashes water onto dishes.
1863
1863–1865
In 1863 Richards and Alexander patented a tub with dishes held in a rack around the edge and curved paddles spinning in the middle. In 1865 Alexander patented a version with gears that spun the dishes through the water. Dozens more dishwasher patents followed over the next 25 years.
Why it mattered. Inventors kept trying, but a hand crank could not move enough water to get dishes truly clean.
1886
28 December 1886
Cochrane's heirloom dishes kept getting chipped in the washing up, so she designed a better way. Wire compartments held plates, cups and saucers on a wheel inside a copper boiler, and hot soapy water squirted up from below and rained down on them. With the mechanic George Butters she built it in a shed and won US patent 355,139.
Why it mattered. It was the first dishwasher to clean with the force of water instead of scrubbers, the idea every dishwasher still uses.
1893
Nine of Cochrane's machines washed dishes in the restaurants and pavilions of the huge Chicago fair. Her machine won a prize for ‘best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work’. Restaurants and hotels took notice.
Why it mattered. The fair turned a clever idea into a business with real customers.
1897
1887–1898
Chicago's Palmer House hotel is said to have been one of her first customers, in 1887. Her company was renamed Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company in 1897 and opened its own factory the next year, with Butters as manager. Big models could wash and dry hundreds of dishes in a few minutes, but most homes had no supply of hot water to run one.
Why it mattered. For decades, dishwashers were machines for hotels, restaurants and hospitals, not families.
1900 – 1945
Electric motors arrive, the front door and spinning sprayer appear, and Europe gets its first electric dishwasher. Most homes still lack the hot water these machines need.
1910
1910–1921
The Walker brothers sold hand-cranked dishwashers for $20 with a free trial. GE Appliances, whose Hotpoint business later took Walker over, says Walker made the first front-loading, single-rack dishwasher in 1913. By 1921 Walker was advertising an electric ‘Dishwasher and Dryer’ for new homes.
Why it mattered. Electric motors began to do the hard work that hands had done.
1924
Livens, an engineer best known for weapons he designed in the First World War, invented a small dishwasher for the home. It had a door on the front for loading, a wire rack to hold the plates and a rotating sprayer to throw water over them.
Why it mattered. Front door, rack and spinning sprayer: almost every dishwasher since has followed this layout.
1926
Hobart, the company that made KitchenAid mixers, bought the Crescent Washing Machine Company, which Cochrane had founded. She had died in 1913, but her dishwashers lived on.
Why it mattered. It linked Cochrane's invention to one of the best-known kitchen brands in the world.
1929
Miele built a round metal tub with baskets for plates and cutlery. You filled it with hot water by hand, then an electric motor spun a propeller at the bottom that sprayed water over the dishes for several minutes.
Why it mattered. It brought the electric dishwasher to European homes, and Miele went on to make more than 20 million of them.
1945 – 1990
After the war, fully automatic machines with spinning spray arms, special detergents and leak protection move into kitchens in North America, Europe and Japan.
1949
After the Second World War, Hobart launched its first home dishwasher under the KitchenAid name. The KD-10 had a heavy cast-iron spray arm that spun beneath stainless-steel racks.
Why it mattered. Cochrane's line of machines finally reached ordinary American kitchens, just as the post-war building boom began.
1954
GE says its Mobile Maid was the first automatic portable dishwasher. Instead of being plumbed in, a portable machine could be rolled up to the kitchen sink and connected to the tap.
Why it mattered. Homes without special plumbing could now have a dishwasher too.
1955
Laundry powder left dishes dull when used in a dishwasher. P&G launched Cascade, a detergent made just for automatic dishwashers. Later chemists added things like bleach, enzymes and rinse aids.
Why it mattered. Dishwashers clean with chemistry as much as with water jets.
1960
Miele launched the G 10, which it describes as a fully automatic front-loading dishwasher with rotating spray arms. Nobody had to pour in hot water any more: the machine ran the whole wash on its own.
Why it mattered. Load it, start it and walk away: this is how dishwashers have worked ever since.
1960
The MR-500 was Japan's first dishwasher, reflecting founder Konosuke Matsushita's hope of freeing women from housework. It was as big as a washing machine and expensive, so few people bought it. Japanese makers later became known for small dishwashers that sit on the counter.
Why it mattered. Small kitchens needed small machines, and Japan led the way.
1964
Bosch started work on a home dishwasher in 1960, showed its first one at a trade fair in 1964, and began mass production in March 1965. Bosch says machines of the 1960s used about 60 litres of water and 2.3 kWh of electricity for each wash.
Why it mattered. Dishwashers became a mass-produced European appliance, and the race to use less water began.
1985
A burst hose on a dishwasher can flood a kitchen. Bosch introduced Aquastop, a safety system that stops the water flowing if there is a leak.
Why it mattered. It made people trust a machine full of water enough to run it while they slept or went out.
1987
Miele launched its first dishwasher with a cutlery tray, a shallow third level above the baskets. Knives, forks and spoons lie flat and get washed on their own level.
Why it mattered. Better loading means better cleaning, because water can reach every surface.
By the numbers
Dishwashers spread slowly: it took about 60 years after the KD-10 for most American homes to have one.
1990 – 2015
Energy labels, water limits and sensors push dishwashers to use far less water and power, and scientists show they can beat washing by hand.
1996
Dishwashers became an ENERGY STAR product category, alongside fridges and room air conditioners. Models that use much less energy than the rules require can carry the blue star.
Why it mattered. Shoppers could now spot efficient machines at a glance.
1997
16 April 1997
A European directive required new dishwashers to carry a label rating their energy use from A to G, with water use and noise also shown. In 1990 an average new dishwasher sold in the EU used about 30 litres of water per cycle.
Why it mattered. Labels pushed makers to compete on saving energy and water, not just on price.
2000
1995–2000
GE says it launched the first ‘smart’ auto-sensing dishwasher in 1995. In 2000 Bosch added the AquaSensor, which checks how cloudy the wash water is, and won a Bavarian innovation prize for a machine that picks its own programme.
Why it mattered. A machine that measures how dirty the water is can stop as soon as the dishes are clean, saving water and energy.
2003
Researchers asked 113 people from across Europe to wash 12 place settings by hand. On average they used 103 litres of water and about 2.5 kWh of energy. An efficient dishwasher of the time did the same load with about 15 litres and 1 to 2 kWh, and usually got it cleaner.
Why it mattered. It showed that a modern dishwasher saves water and energy compared with most people at the sink.
2008
BSH put zeolite, a mineral full of tiny holes, into a dishwasher. Zeolite soaks up water vapour from the air inside and gives off heat as it does, which helps dry the dishes. BSH says this saves up to 20% of the energy per wash.
Why it mattered. It was then the most energy-efficient dishwasher in the world, and it won two German awards in 2009.
2010
1 July 2010
Phosphates softened water and helped detergents clean, but in rivers and lakes they feed algae that choke the water. Sixteen US states banned high-phosphate dishwasher detergent in July 2010, and the EU set a strict limit from 1 January 2017.
Why it mattered. Chemists had to invent new recipes that clean well without harming lakes.
2013
30 May 2013
New standard-size dishwashers sold in the US could use no more than 5.0 gallons (about 19 litres) of water per cycle and 307 kWh of electricity a year.
Why it mattered. Rules made sure even the cheapest machines stopped wasting water.
By the numbers
European dishwashers now use a small fraction of the water they did in the 1960s.
2015 – today
Machines dose their own detergent and sip about 10 litres a load. Most homes in the US and Germany have one, but in India and China they are still rare.
2018
Miele's G 7000 range added AutoDos, a built-in cartridge that adds detergent to each wash by itself. The machine can also be controlled from a phone app.
Why it mattered. Too much detergent wastes chemicals and too little leaves dirt, so the machine now measures it for you.
2020
Very few Indian homes owned a dishwasher, and many relied on paid help to wash up. When the COVID-19 lockdown kept helpers away, The News Minute reported LG seeing a 400–500% surge in demand. A Bosch-Siemens executive later told afaqs! that yearly sales rose from 50,000–60,000 units before COVID to about 1.5 lakh (150,000) during it.
Why it mattered. A crisis made millions of people think again about who washes the dishes.
2021
1 March 2021
So many dishwashers were rated A+++ that the EU brought back a simple A to G label with much stricter classes. By 2020 the average new dishwasher in the EU used about 10 litres of water per cycle, a third of the 1990 amount.
Why it mattered. Resetting the scale left room for machines to keep getting better.
Did you know?
Josephine Cochrane invented her dishwasher not to save time, but because her best china kept getting chipped in the washing up.
In a University of Bonn study, people washing 12 place settings by hand used 103 litres of water on average, about seven times what an efficient dishwasher needed.
Bosch says its 1960s dishwashers used about 60 litres of water and 2.3 kWh per wash; its eco programme today uses about 6 litres and 0.5 kWh.
In 2015, almost 20% of American households that had a dishwasher did not use it at all.
About three in four homes in the United States have a dishwasher, but in India it is closer to one in two hundred.
The people
active 1850 · Inventor · USA
Patented the first dishwashing machine, a hand-cranked wooden tub.
active 1860s · Inventor · USA
Patented dishwashers with racks, paddles and gears in 1863 and 1865.
1839 – 1913 · Inventor and business owner · USA
Invented the first practical dishwasher and built a company around it; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.
active 1880s – 1890s · Mechanic · USA
Helped Cochrane build her first machine and later managed her factory.
1889 – 1964 · Engineer · England
Designed a home dishwasher with a front door, wire rack and rotating sprayer in 1924.
1869 – 1938 · Industrialist · Germany
Co-founded Miele, which made Europe's first electric dishwasher.
1869 – 1939 · Industrialist · Germany
Co-founded Miele with Carl Miele in 1899 and built its sales network.
1894 – 1989 · Industrialist · Japan
Founder of Panasonic, which made Japan's first dishwasher in 1960.
born 1959 · Chemical engineer · USA
Co-invented a Cascade dishwasher detergent formula at Procter & Gamble, patented in 1987.
active 1990s – 2020s · Household technology scientist · Germany
Led University of Bonn studies comparing washing up by hand with dishwashers.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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