We were eating at the counter in the Dobbs House, a diner-type restaurant where I could watch the Hobart turtle back dishwasher. I remarked to daddy that once the dishes were all in the bed of nails rack, whose random loading pattern was so different to that in our GE, the operator rinsed all of the food from the dishes before the tray was pushed into the machine. Daddy explained that the food waste could be removed by the powerful wash action but that the food diluted the cleaning strength of the detergent in the tank so more detergent would be needed to keep the solution up to optimum strength if it were not rinsed off beforehand. One of the reasons that users of home dishwashers pre-rinsed dishes with very warm to hot water before loading into early machines was to warm them up so that the wash water in the only wash was not cooled excessively by room temperature dishes. Of course, machines like the APEX, which had the on board water heater that supplied 180F water for the wash also required preparation of dishes with protein foods on them so that the hot water would not cook the soil onto the plates. This is partly why you see a rubber spatula being used to push the food off the plates before loading even while the ads claim no pre-rinsing needed. Everyone in our neighborhood was familiar with Mrs. Nesbitt's tale of horror resulting from her loading breakfast plates with egg on them into her dishwasher and having the egg blown up and cooked into the glasses above them.
