Notes & Queries response - Why is there a window on a washing machine but not on a dishwasher?

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on the 26th February, 2023.

The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead.

This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.

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Why is there a window on a washing machine but not on a dishwasher?

image generated by Craiyon

It was during the post-war years of the 20th Century that the now-ubiquitous dishwasher embarked upon a cultural and technological journey; one that would result in its gradual acceptance as an indispensable aid in the modern kitchen. It lined up alongside those other miracles of the modern age – the fridge/freezer, and the gas or electric cooker. By the late 1970s, when dishwashers were beginning to become commonplace, the applied technology had been in existence for almost a century. Early versions of the appliance were unreliable and were priced well beyond the pocket of the average household. It is now unthinkable that any home with sufficient under the counter space would not include one.

The arrival of the affordable dishwasher coincided with the end of the so-called foam pattern wars that had raged among the producers of sink detergents since the late 1950s. By the late 1960s / early 1970s, things had really begun to heat up. Accusations of patent theft and worse were being freely banded about, and quarrelled over by teams of lawyers.

The dissipating foundations of this long-running corporate skirmish were the distinct bubble arrangements that were produced by different brands of dishwashing soap. Every company keenly asserted that it was their formulation, and not their competitors, that produced the best results for the lowest price.

At the time, the market leaders were Cuthbert's, The Irish Hands Company, Byfords and Faerns. Irish Hands had its roots in the Irish Catholic nunneries and is still owned by the church. At the time of writing, its products are sold mostly on the African continent and in South America. The brand currently has no presence in the United Kingdom, or (ironically) in Ireland.

The first company to patent a bubble-arrangement, and also the first to claim that this pattern gave their product an advantage in the cleaning of dishes, was Byfords. The Byfords foam pattern consisted of a large central bubble, girdled around the hemisphere by a ring of smaller bubbles. The passing similarity to the planet Saturn and its rings was not lost on Byfords, who made ongoing use of the comparison in their advertising. A typical print advertisement for Byfords Dish Soap depicted an assortment of gleaming plates and dishes partly immersed in the orbital rings of the giant planet. Bob McCreath credits this imagery with kindling an early interest in space that eventually led to him pursuing a lauded career as an astronomer. He was among the many thousands who collected tokens from the boxes of Byfords Formulated Dish Soap Granules, and sent off for the giant wall chart of the universe that had been produced by the company, and that went through 32 reprintings before the demand finally tailed-off.

Byfords went so far as to bankroll a pair of science fiction movies – Star Knights of Valier VII and Ruzloar. They were sponsors of the Byfords Science Fiction Hour which debuted on the radio before making a transition to television screens in 1963, where it ran for three seasons. Ruzloar is considered ahead of its time owing to its depiction of an Arabic protagonist and use of a largely Arabic cast. The film has been the subject of remake rumours for many years, though it seems there is disagreement in regard to who owns the rights.

The most distinctive bubble arrangement is the Kerry Lilac-scented sea of flower heads, each bearing a septet of elongated petals, that is formed whenever Irish Hands Company Dish Soap makes contact with warm water. The occasionally bizarre image of a nun washing dishes in what appeared to be a trough of flowers was recurrent in the advertising for this brand.

Fearns' emphasised the “feather kindness” of their tightly-knit, small-celled foam. The company even went so far as to claim that the background noise of the millions of tiny bubbles bursting, had been created to calm the frayed nerves of the over-stretched and stressed-out housewife, as she did the washing up.

As a young boy, the foam pattern that impressed me the most was Cuthbert's strongly-iridescent, lopsided honeycomb of giant cells that crowded the sink with what appeared to be chunks of faded stained glass.

As dishwashers made a series of giant steps towards common usage there was a fear from the manufacturers that foam pattern patents might be infringed upon, intentionally or otherwise, within their appliances, and result in costly legal action. To avoid this, it was decided that all dishwashers would be sold with windowless doors, leaving their internal workings a mystery to observers.

By the mid-1980s the credibility of the foam pattern as a cleaning agent had been undermined by comparative studies, that revealed them to be little more than aesthetically pleasing snake oil. This hill, that sink detergent companies had been prepared to fight and die on, was discretely abandoned as brands were either absorbed or underwent dramatic overhauls. One enduring legacy has been the windowless dishwasher, which has remained one of the poker-faced kitchen appliances ever since.

I hope this is of help.

image generated by Craiyon