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When you’re a fancy socialite and the servants keep breaking your fine china while washing it, you can either hire better help, or you can invent a machine to do the job right. Josephine Cochrane chose the latter.

I’ll Do it Myself!

The daughter of an engineer and granddaughter of an inventor, Josephine Cochrane lived in a small Illinois town 200 miles south of Chicago. Legend has it, she once proclaimed, “If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I’ll do it myself!” and went to the shed behind her home to begin her work.

With no formal training in engineering, she hired mechanic George Butters to help bring her vision to life. After years of perfecting her dishwashing machine, she eventually founded the Garis-Cochrane Manufacturing Company in 1886, a company that still today shares some distant corporate DNA with Whirlpool.

Taking it to the Fair

Before Josephine’s, there were two prior recognized attempts to develop dishwashing machines. One creation in 1850 resulted in a clunky contraption cranked by hand that merely soaked the dishes. Another added racks and spun the dishes through a tub of water.

Then, in 1893 at the Chicago’s World Fair, Josephine shared her revolutionary machine with the world. The exposition was known for premiering many significant inventions including early moving pictures, the Ferris Wheel, and Westinghouse Electric who powered the entire fair. But the winner of “best mechanical construction, durability, and adaptation to its line of work” went to Josephine’s “Lavadora” dishwashing machine.

Under Pressure

The Cochrane dishwasher was notably the first to use water pressure to clean dishes. Josephine’s design was made of wire compartments specifically-sized for plates and cups. These compartments sat within an open wheel that laid flat in a copper boiler. As a motor turned the wheel, hot soapy water shot up from the bottom then rained back down on the dishes.

By 1897, her company was known as Cochrane’s Crescent Washing Machine Company and sold mostly to commercial customers. Restaurants and hotels were eager to adopt this new invention, which was one of many to come from The Gilded Age. 

The 20th Century and Cochrane’s Legacy

In 1886, the United States granted Josephine a patent, but her work wasn’t done. She continued improving on her invention and was given a second patent posthumously in 1917. Nine years later, the Crescent Dishwashing Company was sold to the company that made the KitchenAid appliances before becoming a part of Whirlpool.

Although she didn’t receive much acclaim during her lifetime, Josephine is now remembered as one of the great women inventors to come from the early Industrial Era. In 2006, she was even inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

It is believed her death in 1913 was brought on by exhaustion from her unrelenting dedication to her work. Prior to her passing she was quoted as saying, “If I knew all I know today when I began to put the dishwasher on the market, I never would have had the courage to start. But then, I would have missed a very wonderful experience.”

We find the process of inventing tremendously rewarding. The history of Custom Powder Systems is full of inspiring moments leading to thrilling solutions. Just as Josephine Cochrane solved the tedium of dishwashing, can we invent something that will make your company run better and more efficiently? Contact us today and let us know. All images sourced from USPTO.

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It was a simple mistake. You’ve probably even done it yourself: a trip out of town, a forgotten bowl of fruit… Next thing you know, you’ve invented penicillin. Admittedly, there were a few more steps involved in creating usable penicillin, but it just goes to show that you never know how the next great discovery will happen.

An Absent-Minded Professor

The journey of penicillin began at a lab in Scotland in 1928 and eventually found its way to a moldy cantaloupe in Peoria, Illinois. The improbable twists and turns during this discovery would lead to the most widely-used antibiotic in the world. 

One day, Sir Alexander Fleming, sometimes known to be a “careless lab technician,” left a culture plate of staphylococcus on the table. When he returned, he saw that mold had contaminated the culture. And he also saw something else: the mold seemed to be halting the growth of the staphylococci. A repeat of the experiment showed it was, in fact, doing just that. Fleming reported, “the staphylococcus colonies became transparent and were undergoing lysis (the rupturing and disintegration of cell membranes).”

On to Oxford

Alexander Fleming stopped studying penicillin in 1931 when Oxford researchers took up the challenge of creating a medicine. Throughout the 1930’s scientists took on the difficult task of isolating penicillin, something Fleming didn’t think was feasible. There were small scale successes along the way, but collecting enough penicillin to be effective unfortunately remained elusive.

Then, in 1942, Fleming came back into the picture when he was treating someone with streptococcal meningitis, a fatal disease at the time. Australian scientist Howard Florey gave the last available medicinal penicillin sample to Fleming, and the patient showed improvement almost immediately. Within a week, the meningitis was gone, and the patient fully recovered.

A Moldy Cantaloupe in Illinois

At this time, the world had gone headlong into World War II, and penicillin was being used to treat the wounded. However, the problem with mass-producing penicillin persisted. The British War Cabinet and the War Production Board of The United States soon launched a worldwide mission to find a way to grow the best strain of mold.

The search ended at a market in Peoria, Illinois atop a moldy cantaloupe. From there, a Pfizer scientist was able to develop large-scale production of pharmaceutical-grade penicillin. Within a year, and in just time for the invasion of Normandy, millions of doses were being produced. Soldiers and civilians alike were being saved from otherwise deadly infections.

Penicillin Today

Now, over 90 years since its discovery, penicillin continues to halt bacterial infections in patients before they have a chance to cause further illness or death. Since it first went into use, penicillin has also been a springboard for further developments. For example, semi-synthetic antibiotics like Amoxicillin work on a broader range of bacteria and are safer for those with allergies to traditional penicillin.

This story reminds us of the work we did a few years ago for Pfizer in their China plant. A big creation from a little discovery is the kind of work we do every day at Custom Powder Systems. When we know the kind of challenge you’re facing, all it takes is a tiny seed of inspiration to make something wonderful. What can we create for you? Contact us here.

When your stomach is upset, it’s convenient to have a pharmacist for a husband. When your husband/pharmacist makes something that works so well it becomes a best-selling product within two years, you’ve got yourself the History of Tums.

Something Isn’t Agreeing With Me

In the 19th century, there were many remedies for an upset stomach. Some turned to papaya for its powerful enzymes. In 1887, Johnson & Johnson developed Papoid Tablets, made from the extract of papaya, and guaranteed it would “digest any kind of food mankind could eat.”

If that didn’t do the trick, you could try “Dr. Bonker’s Celebrated Egyptian Oil.” In spite of it being concocted by a guy literally named “Bonker,” stomach sufferers were encouraged to “take 10 to 20 drops every half hour in Molasses or on sugar, and at the same time apply externally.”

The Opposite of Acid 

By 1928, medical experts understood that upset stomachs appeared to be caused by overactive acids in the digestive system. St. Louis pharmacist James Howe deduced that if acid was the problem, the solution would be to neutralize the acids.

His wife suffered from indigestion, and one night in his basement he created an “anti-acid,” a mixture of sugar and calcium carbonate (CaCO3). This “anti-acid,” or what we now call “antacid,” did the trick and settled Mrs. Howe’s heartburn. Soon, it was doing the same for others’ upset stomachs all across St. Louis. Just two short years later, a manufacturing company was built, and Tums became a national hit.

A Century of Antacids

Soon after the success of Tums, competition came in the form of Alka-Seltzer, Rolaids, and Pepto-Bismol. Each have slightly different formulations using ingredients such as salts of aluminum, calcium, magnesium, and sodium.

The Tums brand stayed in the Howe family for nearly 50 years before being sold to Revlon and eventually to its current owner, GlaxoSmithKline. Today, the Tums factory still sits on the same site where James Howe first manufactured it, churning out a staggering six-billion tablets every year.

Custom Powder Systems Gets Tums in Line

Custom Powder Systems, another proud Missouri company, lives just three hours west of the Tums facility. This means we were primed and ready when GSK asked us to help design, build, and install barrier walls between their Tums lines in order to keep the different colors/flavors separated during processing.

Step one was to discuss the problem GSK was facing and ask questions to get the full scope of the situation. Then, after surveying the area, we decided to construct walls made from stainless-steel tubing and lexan panels, which effectively kept the individual tablets from “jumping the line” and mixing together.

The way we efficiently solved the Tums obstacle for GlaxoSmithKline is just one example of how we at Custom Powder Systems are constantly finding new and creative ways to help efficiently process, mix, and contain quality products.

What can we help you make? Let us know through our Contact Page.

Sales Executive Rayce Gibson has rejoined us here at Custom Powder Systems, and we couldn’t be happier. And it sure seems he’s happy with his decision, too. “I’ve known these guys forever,” Rayce says. “We already knew each other, we knew what we expected from each other. We know how each other works. It really was just like going back home.”

Rayce’s history with CPS is more than just previous employment with us. We’ve known and respected his talents even when he worked with our competitors. For Rayce, manufacturing has always been a significant part of his world.

Growing Up in Manufacturing

Rayce was born into a manufacturing family as the third generation in the industry. When attended the University of Nebraska he studied business and marketing and would eventually go on to work in the family business. He was ready to take his newly-learned marketing skills and business know-how to truly make an impact at his first job.

How Can I Help Solve This Problem? 

No matter where his paycheck comes from Gibson always keeps his eye on what really matters: the customer. “We get together, we talk about their problems, the issues that they’re encountering, how we can make it better…” says Rayce. “And then we go back to engineering and say, ‘How can we help solve this problem? How can we solve this issue and make the handling of their product, their time, and their process better?’”

Rayce says the team spends time investigating a customer’s current process and finding where hang-ups might be happening. “We get deeply involved investigating the materials, asking, ‘What is the bulk density? What’s the particle size? How does it flow? What’s your ideal situation from point A to point B?’”

Back Where He Wants to Be

For Rayce, Custom Powder is exactly where he wants to be at this point in his career. “I’d worked with Denise, Mac and Bob not only at Custom Powder, but at my previous employer. I felt it was the right time to go back. I liked everything that they’ve done with the company. They care about their employees, they care about each other, they care about the customers, and that’s what I’m about. I want to make sure that the customer is taken care of, but we have fun doing it.” When he’s not helping our customers with creative solutions, Rayce likes to spend his free time woodworking and admiring classic cars.

We are so grateful Rayce decided to once again share his talents with our team. We love having another skilled brain around to help us keep on solving.

To help us put Rayce to work developing unique solutions for you, reach out to us here.