The History of the Flush Toilet
When you think of major inventions before 1900 one of the last that will come to mind is the flush toilet. So yeah it doesn’t caring the same sense as an invention such as the airplane, stoplight or telephone but it has served its purpose just as much as the others. The flush toilet is one of few inventions that hasn’t went obsolete over time and still use in everyday life. Believe it or not there were people who didn’t have the benefit of this invention we take for granted.
The bathroom is a room that we have dedicated to use daily, from bathing to grooming. There was a point in history to where a bathroom wasn’t even in a blueprint of a house plan. Before mid-1800s people then didn’t have the luxury of a space to dispose of body waste sanitary. In Medieval times people used potties. Potties were kept in most homes. Streets had open drains – channels that ran down the streets – so it was easy to empty the pots. You just threw your waste out of the window. When people threw their potty waste out of the window, they would shout "Gardez l’eau" [gar-day low], which is French for "watch out for the water”. Rich people had little rooms extending out from the walls of their homes, there would be a plank of wood with a hole in it, to sit on. There was nothing underneath, so whatever you empty from your body would just drop to the ground for stories up. When taking care of our business in the bathroom the last thing we would associate it with is food but, in the 1700s, the most likely place for a potty would be in the dining room. They were kept inside furniture pieces. Most city people had a drain in their garden or under their house. They would empty the pot into the drain. Around that time there are lots of stories from that time about people dying in the 'night air'. This was really deadly poisonous gas that came off by the waste in the drains.
Around 1750, a new type called a "pan closet" was invented. At the bottom of the closet was a pan designed to seal in unpleasant odors. It wasn’t very good because they couldn't keep the pan clean. American inventors were seeking solutions to the problem of building a sanitary water closet. As early as 1875, James Henry and William Campbell patented a plunger-type water closet; over the next 50 or so years more than 350 applications formed for patent. When it comes to the inventor of the toilet Thomas Crapper is often given credit, probably because of the pun filled name but he is only the owner of the first main distributor of the flush toilet. Crapper didn’t one day sit down and decide that what the world needed was an indoor toilet. His product was another tweak of a design problem that the Victorians had been puzzling over: how to build a flushing water closet that would efficiently and sanitarily remove waste without allowing dangerous sewer gases to enter. When Crapper advanced his design, flushing water closets weren’t a new idea. Sir John Harrington, who was the godson of Queen Elizabeth I, had designed one for her use in 1596, although it never caught on with the rest of society, and was more of to be more of a novelty than a everyday invention, especially in the nonexistence of widespread sewer system.
In this day and age ever every home, business, school, and building at least has one bathroom equipped with a toilet and they all vary in in sizes and styles. Most toilets have either one- or two-piece construction and come with either a smaller, round bowl or larger, extended bowl. Ranging from juvenile models like preschools to chair-height models for large adults or even people with special needs. White is still the most common color, and the typical height from bowl rim to floor is about 15 to 17 inches. Most housing toilets are installed on the floor, but wall-mount models are an option for bathrooms short on floor space. Most toilets are made from Vitreous china, or porcelain, is most common construction material for the toilet itself in homes and also public restrooms The most common type of toilet is a gravity-fed model, which relies on the weight of the water and head pressure (height of the water in the tank) to promote the flush. If you see free-standing water when looking down into the tank, your toilet is gravity fed. Dual-flush toilets are one type of gravity-fed toilet. Dual-flush toilets let users choose from one of two flush options depending on need: Users can push one button for a regular 1.6-gpf flush, or they can push another for a reduced flush using about 0.9 gallons of water. There are the pressure-assist toilet relies on air pressure within a cylindrical vessel, inside the toilet tank. Air inside the vessel forces a forceful, rapid flush. The vessel, along with a powerful flush, is a sign of a pressure-assist toilet. Drains for toilets are either on the floor, or in the wall. Wall outlets can be either 4 inches off the floor, or the fixture is "hung" on the wall over the outlet. When comfort comes in play when designing a toilet, you can get the seats soften to your leisure. This is an example of the different piping done for toilets.
With the invention of the sanitary flushable toilet society and people no longer needed to rely on chamber pots and open windows and backyards to dispose of their waste. Nor did they have to fear sewer gases like methane seeping back up into their homes and igniting explosively. Which I think many people today would be very grateful for today if they took the time to understand how fortunate we are for this invention.