Dishwasher History in Brief
Modern Kitchen Dishwasher
The history of the kitchen dishwasher is very humble. The first mechanical dishwasher was invented by Joel Houghton in 1850; it was labor intensive and was highly unreliable. However the first ever commercially successful and working dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane in 1887. Josephine Cochrane is actually the granddaughter of John Fitch, the inventor of the steam boat. Josephine invented the dishwasher out of pure necessity, as washing her huge load of china dishes were a real trouble and since the only available dishwasher was small and unreliable, so she went ahead and ended up inventing the dishwasher.
How a Dishwasher works
A dishwasher basically works by mechanically spraying hot water onto unclean dishes. This greatly reduces and even completely eradicates the use of physical manual techniques such as scrubbing. A dishwasher can also be customized to use cold water or switch between cold and hot water whenever needed. Typically it uses a soup of detergent and hot water to first spray onto the dishes, and then clean hot water is used to clean off the detergent remains. Modern dish washers have multiple rinse cycles, some even comprising a separately attached unit called Rinse aid. They will also have drop down door systems which allow easy access to the inner baskets that hold the dishes while they are being cleaned. Newer models also include a micro processor which presets certain wash cycles, that allow for a far more effective cleaning with almost zero water spot and also saves a lot of water, almost like a washing machine.
The Early Dishwasher
Earlier versions of the dishwasher used a lot of energy and the compartment was incapable of placing the dishes in an ordered and systematic manner which reduced the effectiveness of cleaning, and often the user would have to rinse the dishes after pulling them out of the dishwasher. The earlier dishwashers also created a lot of noise; however the modern units put sound damping technology to its use and can reduce the noise level of a running dish washer by 60 to 75 decibels.
Nowadays with more environmental concerns, the use of biodegradable detergent in a dishwasher has also increased and many dish washers also use chemical water softeners which diminishes the effect of magnesium and calcium ions in the water.
However a dishwasher should not be used to wash anything made out of lead crystal. Due to the high reactivity of lead crystals, they may react with the dishwasher detergent and become soluble with the water and that may cause serious health implications.
The bottom line is, that the friendly Dishwasher is a highly efficient and time saving kitchen appliance, according to a survey manually washing dishes uses somewhere between 20 to 300 liters of water, while the same amount of dishes can be easily and efficiently cleaned by an energy efficient dishwasher with the use of only 15 to 22 liters, with an energy consumption of 1to 2 kWh, while manually the energy consumption would be around 0.1 to 8kWh.
Today no kitchen can be considered completely stocked with adequate kitchen appliances without the labor saving modern dishwasher.