On August 15, 1835, C. H. Farnham received a patent on a Washing Machine, this patent issued just before the USPTO started numbering patents, so this patent was part of the infamous X-series of patents, and was retroactively numbered X8993.

There was an earlier patent, X-series patent granted March 3, 1797, to Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire for “an improvement in washing clothes.”