Creator of the Only Self-Cleaning Home, Dies at 101

Image Credit: Shane Young

For decades, Frances Gabe did not clean her house, nor did anyone clean it for her. Yet for all that time, it was spotless. More than half a century ago, incensed by the housecleaning that was a woman’s chronic lot, Ms. Gabe began to dream of a house that would see to its own hygiene: tenderly washing, rinsing and drying itself at the touch of a button. She built that house, receiving United States patent 4,428,085 in 1984:

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In a 1982 column about Ms. Gabe’s work, the humorist Erma Bombeck proposed her as “a new face for Mount Rushmore.”


Read NYT Obituary here 

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