It’s hard to imagine what our homes would look like without these everyday items invented by women.
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The Dishwasher
Inventor: Josephine Cochrane
“If nobody else is going to invent a dish washing machine, I’ll do it myself.”Josephine Cochrane reportedly spoke those words in 1886. At the end of that year, she received a patent for the world’s first practical dishwasher. While several other inventors offered earlier dishwashing designs, Cochrane’s dishwasher was the first to clean with water pressure instead of scrubbers. 2 / 8Fabrice LEROUGE
The Home Security System
It has been said many times that necessity is the mother of invention. That was definitely the case with Marie Van Brittan Brown, who in 1966 designed the first home security system to counter high crime rates and slow response times from police in her Queens, N.Y. neighborhood.
This early prototype contained many elements still used in modern home security including peepholes, cameras, monitors, alarm buttons and two-way microphones. Brown’s design is also credited with popularizing closed-circuit televisions in security systems.