Art |
Cars |
Food |
Hair |
Money |
Music |
Telephone |
Shoes |
Toilet |
Toys
During the Middle Ages, around 400-1500, people got rid of human waste by tossing it into the street. Today, civilized people can't imagine life without the porcelain throne. 400-1500 In medieval Paris, for example, human waste is dumped outside the city walls. Because the piles of excrement sometimes get so high that they give enemies a good vantage point, Parisians periodically have to extend the city walls. In London, public latrines line London Bridge and human waste pours into
the Thames River. Some of England's rivers, such as the Fleet, stop flowing
because of the volume of feces. Fleet River eventually becomes Fleet Street. The official term for a partitioned room was "garderobe," which originally meant a clothes closet. A garderobe was very small -- maybe 3 feet wide -- and was outfitted with a cold, stone seat. The waste dropped several hundred feet into a moat below. The distance prevented the pesky "back splash." Thus, it goes without saying that medieval moats were both defensive and offensive. For modesty's sake or otherwise, euphemisms were created for the garderobe. The oratory, the chapel, privy (short for the Latin word privacy). The priest's hole came about because Roman Catholic priests would hide there to avoid persecution in England. Outside medieval castle walls, unsightly brown streaks would stain the walls beneath garderobes. The surrounding moat was a cesspit. Occasionally, people would be asked to clean it out. They disposed of the dung in rivers, in pits or on big piles on open ground. Bonus gross fact! Several castles were captured by invaders who courageously swam through the waste-infested moat and climbed up the garderobe shaft. 1500-1700 Common people relieve themselves on chamber pots and privies. When they are finished using their chamber pots, they throw the contents out the windows and into the streets. The French warn passers-by by hollering, "Gardez l'eau!" which means, "Watch out for the water!" The English pronounce it "gardy loo" Maybe that's why the British call the toilet the "loo." Louis XIV horrifies his visitors by asking them to chat while he does his business on the close-stool. Early settlers in America use outdoor privies no matter how cold it is, until they think to use chamber pots in their bedrooms in the late 1600s. 1775 In the late 1700s, Paris starts building sewers underneath the city. 1778 In the 1800s, three British entrepreneurs made dramatic improvements to the toilet. Thomas Crapper: He improved his predecessor's valve system in 1884. A pull-chain worked with a valveless toilet tank. This system decreased noise and preserved water. He called it the "Valveless Water-Waste Preventer." Water in the tank refilled automatically. One good pull on the chain would flush the toilet; users did not have to pull and hold the pull-chain for the water to flush the bowl. He held nine patents for plumbing-related inventions in England, but he did not invent the toilet. George Jennings: He greatly increased the pressure of water entering the toilet bowl. The result: The toilet contents were fully emptied and the bowl was left clean. He conducted tests by successfully flushing 10 apples, a flat sponge and four pieces of paper. Thomas Twyford: He created the porcelain toilet bowl, which was much easier to clean. The new toilet designs did not solve the problem of trapped sewer gas. And it was not until the next century that a much quieter toilet was invented. Toilets in the 1800s were so noisy -- despite Crapper's enhancements -- that people inside and outside the house knew when someone had flushed. The house vibrated from water moving through the pipes. 1870s Thomas Maddock becomes the first American to manufacture the porcelain toilet bowl. He carried his 50-pound porcelain model door-to-door in New York. Although business starts to trickle in, most Americans cannot afford a porcelain toilet. They continue using outhouses and chamber pots. New York city planners have a hard time keeping up with human waste output. Austrian immigrant John Michael Kohler founds the Kohler Co. in 1873. It eventually becomes a famous name (his last name, that is) for American bathroom products. Septic tanks are now in use. A modern sewage system is in use in London. Cases of cholera drop. "Night soil" workers empty cesspits and collect contents of chamber pots and dump them into bodies of water. Unlike other countries, America opposes using human waste as fertilizer. A sewage tax is born. 1880s Before modern toilet paper is invented, people use pretty much anything
they could get their hands on ... pages ripped from mail order catalogs,
newspapers, dress patterns, dried corn cobs, wool, shells, stones, leaves,
hay, dry bones, silk, bare hands, goose feathers, sponges on sticks (giving
rise to the phrase "wrong end of the stick"). Crapper of Chelsea, London, was only 9 when the word "crap" came into recorded use in 1846. He hadn't come up with his "Valveless Water-Waste Preventer" yet. Crapper installed many toilets for the British military. When American GIs were stationed in England during World War I, they noticed that most of the water closets were branded "Thomas Crapper & Co." or "T. Crapper Co., Chelsea." Sadly, Crapper became the butt of jokes when troops returned to America. They started tossing around the words "crap" and "crapper." Crapper passed away on Jan. 17, 1910, leaving the world a better place. But there is controversy. There have been claims over the years that Crapper never existed, but that's not true. Some diluted his achievement, others failed to mention him. Still others mistakenly said he invented the first toilet. Crapper gets credit for building a better toilet. Open up your tank and look inside to see Crapper's legacy: a float, a metal arm and a siphon to empty the reservoir. As far as the origin of the word "crap" is concerned, it is still much debated. Perhaps it came from the German word "krappe," a vile and inedible fish. 1939 1960 Talk show host Jack Paar temporarily quits "Tonight Show" because NBC cut him off the air for telling a story that involved a water closet. Turns out he didn't even say "water closet." He said "WC." 1961 1973 1977 1980 • Carter: Water level dropped 1/10th of 1 foot, indicating 300 flushes. This novel public opinion poll indicates -- accurately -- that Kennedy is in deep doo-doo in Iowa. Meanwhile, on the technological front, Toto, the world's leading toilet manufacturer, invents a toilet that can wash and warm your backside. Called a Washlet, this wonder toilet comes with remote-controlled butt blasters, a hot-air dryer, a heated seat and ozone deodorizer. 1985 Reforms go into effect. By 1990, incredulous Republican senators demand
to know why the Pentagon has spent $1,868.15 for a toilet seat cover for
a C-5 cargo plane. It is made of fiberglass-reinforced honeycomb, polyurethane
plastic and stainless steel to withstand a "corrosive environment through
the lifetime of the aircraft." The Defense Department starts flushing
out the facts. In 1990, Wells became something of a symbol for women's rights and a defiant new voice in the emerging national struggle to achieve what has been half-jokingly dubbed "Potty Parity." The Wells case provided rich fodder for bathroom puns and silly rhetoric, but it was not all that amusing to millions of women who continued to find themselves stranded and fuming in interminably sludge-slow lines for bathrooms at stadiums, museums and theaters while enviously eyeing the men's room, where a line rarely forms. Here's what happened to Wells. She was attending a George Strait concert in Houston when nature called. There was a 50-foot line at the women's room. After a few minutes, she couldn't wait any longer. So she ducked into a near-deserted men's room. Afterward, she even flipped the seat back up as a courtesy. When she emerged, however, a Houston police officer, alerted by an unhappy male patron, ticketed her and ejected her from the concert. The case stirred a media maelstrom in Houston. Hundreds of women offered to pay Wells' $200 fine. Although potty parity -- building more women's restrooms than men's -- has been reached in some new public construction, this issue continues to plague women in cities all over the country for the rest of the century. 1990 1992 Consumers rave and rant, saying the new toilets don't work -- that is, they don't really conserve water because they require multiple flushes to get the job done. For the rest of the decade, Americans desperate for a "super" flusher smuggle old-fashioned toilets into the United States from Canada. A bathroom for female senators is installed in U.S. Senate chambers.
Previously, female senators had to use the same bathrooms as tourists. Barry railed against the low-flush toilet in a 1997 column. 1993 1998 1999 Here's the peace accord: Curtis Batts, a 34-year-old Dallas industrial engineer, wins a bronze medal at a national inventors convention in Pittsburgh for a swiveling toilet paper dispenser. Batts holds two patents for the Tilt-A-Roll, his diplomatic solution to an age-old problem. The Tilt-A-Roll flips over with a flick on the wrist, reversing the paper's direction. More good news: The following toilet features are showing up in new or remodeled bathrooms. • Pressure pods inside the tank use compressed air for better flushing
in low-flow models. It's louder than the traditional water closet that
uses only gravity to flush. Future of the Toilet
Future toilet technology will be affected by many concerns -- the volume
of the flush, the need for even more water conservation and the worry
about bacteria and the spread of disease, for example. (These are already
being addressed by toilet makers such as Toto of Japan, a leader in high-tech
toiletry, which makes fixtures incorporating automatic washing and drying.) Related Links Quick History of Plumbing Sources Credits Copyright
KRT is a joint venture of Knight Ridder and the Tribune Co. Art | Cars | Food | Hair | Money | Music | Telephone | Shoes | Toilet | Toys |
