Can you imagine life without a dishwasher? Fudge brownies? Your cell phone? Neither can we—that’s why we’re taking a moment this National Inventors’ Day to recognize a few Illinois inventors and their contributions to history.

In 1885, Josephine Cochrane developed the dishwasher in Shelbyville. As the story goes, Cochrane—a wealthy socialite who frequently hosted dinner parties—hated washing dishes so much that she invented and patented the world’s first mechanical dishwasher. She founded the Garis-Cochran Manufacturing Company in 1886, which became part of KitchenAid after her death in 1913.

Sweet-toothed Illinoisans, rejoice: Chefs at Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel invented the brownie in 1893. According to legend, the hotel owner’s wife requested a dessert that would hold up in boxed lunches for attendees of the World Colombian Exposition. The result? A nutty, apricot-glazed predecessor to the fudgy treats we know today.

The Argonne National Laboratory has received a $200 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a supercomputer that will be five to seven times faster than any now on the planet, according to a statement made by the organization.