Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1886 — A DISH-WASHING MACHINE. [ARTICLE]

A DISH-WASHING MACHINE.

Washing 86,000 Pieces a Day and Never Breaking a Cup One of the Marvels of Inventive GeniuK.' {From the Rehobeth Sunday Herald.] There is an all-day-and-night restaurant on the Bowery which for fourteen years has never closed its doors. Unless the sixty-five employes go on a i strike thq 3,000 persona who eat there every day will continue to sit and sup under the mechanical fans by day and the electric lights at night for years to come. But it would not surprise the cooks, the carvers, nor the waiters in fine linen if Tommy, the water boy, should tell the boss to-mor-row that the Ice Water Pourers and Tumbler Washers’ Union No. 1416 had ordered a strike. Tommy has lately formed a union. A man from Ohio, who said he was an inventor, got the ear of the proprietor two years ago, and said: “How many dishes do you wash a day ?” “Over 1,500," replied the boss. “How many people do you pay for washing them ?” “We have six dish-washers on the pay-roll.” ' “I can make a machine that will wash and dry 8,600 pieces in an hour, without breaking or chipping a dish. I will save you SI,OOO per year in wages alone, and will wash your dishes clean and keep them free from finger marks and lint.” The inventor described his machine. It was a long trough, divided into three compartments. One end was an L and the other end, the front, was a set of valves. He showed the boss how a man could stand at the front end and pull a handle. That would fill the compartment farthest away with sliding hot water, which would afterward be kept hot by steam. When the compartment was full it ran over into the middle trough, and that in turn into the next space, directly in front of the operator.

Soap is put into the water in that compartment. In that space a set of brushes revolved in the water, and they were set with springs, like a clotheswringer, to let large and small dishes pass between them. A wide canvas belt with slats across it ran the whole length of the machine under water. If dishes were put between the revolving brushes they would be scoured with soap suds, dumped on the belt, carried into the second bath and rinsed off, and finally dumped into the clear, hot water in the third compartment. Out of that the belt delivered them into the L, where they dried of their own heat. The machine looked practicable, and the man from Ohio was sent home to build one for the Bowery restaurant. The dish-washers heard that a machine was to be put into the kitchen that would do the laundry work, wash dishes, scrub floors, stairs, and tables and supply steam for heating the building and for running trains on the elevated railroads. They told the boss they would build a bonfire of the machine. They accused him of importing foreign pauper labor from Ohio, and they called a special meeting of the kitchen employes. But in due time the cast-iron dish-washer was set up. When the workmen who set it up came around next morning to test it, all the bolts in the machine were found unscrewed, and the wide canvas belt had been cut though the middle. They fixed it, and a guard was stationed to watch the machine next night. Another trial was made, and the machine washed dishes at the rate of 86,000 pieces per day without apparently breaking a piece; but when the water was drained off the bottoms of the troughs were found covered with broken dishes. The women said the machine broke them, but the Ohio man claimed the pieces were dropped into the water by the women. He must have been right, because the next trial was a perfect success. Everybody in the kitchen had been watched. It took several months for the machine to make friends with the dish-washers, who were given other employment, but to this day it is looked upon as a nonunion employe. It is the only machine of its kind in the city, and the only one other in the State is said to be in a big hotel at Lake Chautauqua.