Invention Of Dishwasher

More than 30 American women patented dish-washing machine in the last three decades of the 19th century. The most successful, and the first to be manufactured commercially, was invented by Josephine Cochran, who filed her patent in 1885.
Josephine Cochran (USA) spelled her name in various ways (sometimes "Cochrane", sometimes "Cockran"), which is said to be because she aspired to greater social status and was looking for a more refined version of her surname. But whatever the variations she used elsewhere in her life, the name that appears on the patent application for her "dish washing machine" is Josephine G. Cochran.
The idea of a dish-washing machine was clearly a preoccupation for American Women in the late 19th century, and particularly for Josephine Cochran. Her social aspirations meant that she considered washing her own crockery beneath her and she did not trust her servants to treat her best dinner services with the care it deserved, so she set about inventing a machine to do the washing up for her. Perhaps the fact that she was descended from John Fitch (who a century earlier had made a disputed claim to have invented steam navigation) gave her the inventive edge over her competitors; on 31 December 1885, after six years of development, she filed a patent for what was to become the first commercially manufactured dishwasher.

Hot water and soap suds were pumped out of two separate cylinders in the bottom of the machine, alternately dousing the racks of crockery before draining back to the cylinders to be pumped round again. On domestic models the piston-pumps were driven by a handle at the side of the machine, while the larger models, intended for hotels and restaurants, were steam-powered. After her machines were exhibited at the 1892-93 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, one newspaper reported that the machines were "capable of washing, scalding, rinsing, and drying from 5 to 20 dozen dishes of all shapes and sizes in two minutes".
Having achieved success, Cochran said that trying to market her machine had been harder than actually inventing it, and announced: "If I knew all I know today I would never have had the courage to start."

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison