A biography of frances gabe
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The overall effect has been compared to an automated car wash, by admirers as well as critics.
More specifically, dishes are cleaned, dried, and stored inside a cupboard that is also a dishwasher. A hatch in the wall channels trash down a chute to the garbage can. The rooms' floors are sloped slightly toward the corners to allow excess water to run off, and vulnerable or valuable objects are protected under glass.
Then in mid-July 2017—some seven months later—the New York Times ran an obituary and, suddenly, Gabe’s story was everywhere.
I knew about the self-cleaning house because it’s one of the examples we reference in Spark!Lab with our Now What? game.
The game challenges visitors to think about solving problems using limited resources.
The Self-Cleaning House has fascinated Harvard University researchers and humorist Erma Bombeck who said she should be added to Mount Rushmore while Fred Amran, the professor of creativity at University of Minnesota, called her patent "incredibly complex, the longest I"ve ever read" and the Self-Cleaning House appeared on Ripley"s Believe lieutenant or Not!.
The house was also display in 2002 and 2003 at The Women"s Museum in Dallas, Texas where it was a popular exhibit.
She and the house were also featured in People magazine in 1982.
Frances E Gabe (1912 - 1923)
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Frances GABe
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Frances Gabe is an American artist and inventor perhaps most well known for designing and building the Self-Cleaning House in Newberg, Oregon. Now what?” Naturally, this is a favorite story among visitors, young and old alike (who likes to clean?), and her quote about housecleaning as a “thankless, unending job, a nerve-twangling bore” is instantly relatable.
Born in 1915 as Frances Grace Arnholtz on a ranch near Boise, Idaho, she was a self-proclaimed "unusual" person. Although Gabe's house may be a bit too practical for some people's taste, it is likely that many of her conveniences, and perhaps even houses modeled on her own, will be adopted for use in time to come.
You Don’t Have Time to Clean Your House—Now What?
Frances Gabe, inventor of the self-cleaning house, died at 101 on December 26, 2016.
Now what? Its new owner removed all of the cleaning devices, though a model that Gabe built of her home still exists and is preserved at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. She either spent much of her time alone with her building contractor father, Frederick, and would accompany him on jobs.
lieutenant wasn"t until after her divorce from Herbert Grant Bateson that she changed her surname to GABe.
The actual self-cleaning house was granted a patent from the United States.
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2025 Memorial Connection Checkers: Frances is 22 degrees from Brigitte Bardot, 20 degrees from Karim al-Husayni, 24 degrees from Jim Bolger, 25 degrees from Marianne Faithfull, 23 degrees from Ace Frehley, 23 degrees from Jane Goodall, 18 degrees from Diane Keaton, 21 degrees from Diane Ladd, 25 degrees from Jean Marsh, 23 degrees from Francisco José Pereira Pinto Balsemão, 21 degrees from Robert Redford and 22 degrees from Christoph von Dohnanyi
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Frances Gabe
"Housework is a thankless, unending job, a nerve-twangling bore.
We show Frank Epperson who invented the popsicle after a drink he left outside overnight froze, and Gauri Nanda who invented Clocky®, an alarm clock that encourages people to get out of bed instead of hitting snooze.
One of the other inventors we highlight is Frances Gabe. How can you use those tubes to remove the puppy from your room?
The first part is a washing closet, the middle third is a dryer, the last third is the storage closet where the clothes wait, ready to wear."*
Perhaps the best view into Gabe’s home, though, is a 1990 video of the inventor herself walking through it with reporter Carl Click. For example, you might spin the “Now” spinner on the game and be presented with the challenge “A puppy suddenly appears.
My system will allow people to do so by pushing a few buttons.” That same article highlighted Gabe’s desire to free women from spending so much time cleaning: “We should be better mothers, wives, neighbors, and spend time improving ourselves instead of saying, ‘I’m sorry, I have to clean the kitchen.’”
Gabe received a patent in 1984 for a “self-cleaning building construction.” The patent describes the invention as “apparatus for applying a fine spray or mist of water and/or water and detergent to wall, floor and ceiling surfaces, followed by warm air drying.
Her psychiatrist once remarked, "You"re many times over a genius.
The world belongs to you, and don"t let anyone tell you anything different." She was once ridiculed for her invention but now architects and builders now agree about it being "functional and attractive". She describes its different elements and demonstrates how the cleaning devices in her kitchen work (or are supposed to work; there’s a slight malfunction of a pipe fitting, though she easily fixes it).
Gabe worked on the self-cleaning house for more than 20 years, continually inventing, sketching, testing, and tweaking its myriad devices.
Her innovations clearly have great potential to benefit overworked homeowners as well as the physically challenged. But something I learned about Gabe after her death is that she thought of the self-cleaning house not just as a solution to her own challenges but also for others’. You turn on the heat and blower to dry everything.