That ingenuity was very much on display in Machinery Hall, at the edge of the Great Basin, where a variety of American inventions were on display, including the telegraph, the phonograph, and Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (patented one hundred years earlier). But it was another, more recent invention that was turning heads and drawing admirers. Into this strange-looking contraption of gears, belts, and pulleys would vanish a cage full of over 200 dirty dishes, only to reappear two minutes later as clean as if they had been hand-washed. Called the Garis-Cochran Dishwashing Machine, it was the only invention on display invented by a woman, and there were nine others just like it being used in the exposition’s many restaurants, from the Big Kitchen to the New England Clam Bake.
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