Toilet. History of invention and production

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
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Toilet. History of invention and production

The history of technology, technology, objects around us

Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us

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A toilet bowl is a sanitary device for defecation of people in the first place, installed in toilets and equipped with an automatic or semi-automatic flushing system. Usually made of sanitary ceramics.

Toilet
Toilet-compact

The design of this device has literally royal roots. For the first time, a toilet seat with a bowl and a water flush was demonstrated in 1596 to the English Queen Elizabeth by her godson John Harrington. According to legend, the queen was very clean and highly appreciated the device, ordering the installation of the same in Richmond Castle and Westminster. However, the nobility considered this extremely indecent, and the coming to power of the pious James I put an end to the ideas of water closetization of England. Harrington's invention was forgotten for almost two centuries in favor of chamber pots, which in those days in cities were customary to empty directly onto the streets (through windows).

In the XVII-XVIII centuries, waves of cholera rolled over the densely populated cities of Europe one after another, claiming tens of thousands of lives. The cause of the disease was considered "poisonous miasma", and only at the end of the 1848th century, doctors began to guess that the poor condition of the sewage system had a direct bearing on epidemics. After the epidemic of 14000, which claimed the lives of 55000 Londoners and more than XNUMX inhabitants of the country, the British government, concerned about public hygiene, passed a series of laws and allocated money for a major modernization of the London sewer system, which, in particular, provided for the mandatory presence of water closets in city houses.

Inventive thought did not doze all this time. The first revolution was made by the Scottish mechanic and watchmaker Alexander Cummings - in 1775 he received a British patent for a drain valve and an S-shaped pipe (water lock), which prevented the penetration of smell into the room. Three years later, the system was improved by the mechanic Joseph Brama (the future inventor of the hydraulic press) - he proposed a folding flap, and also developed a float system for the tank.

Toilet
Toilet diagram by Alexander Cummings

The reign of Queen Victoria was a golden age for British plumbing. In 1852, George Jennings designed a bowl with a valve that opened only during flushing under the weight of the water, and the rest of the time it reliably blocked the drain hole. In the 1870s, plumber and entrepreneur Thomas Krepper suggested raising the cistern to the ceiling to increase water pressure, and stretching a chain with a handle to the lever. He also completely abandoned mechanical valves and dampers in favor of a water seal, and for the first time widely used a siphon system instead of constantly leaking float valves.

The final touch was made in 1883 by Thomas Twyford, presenting his masterpiece - a single design of a bowl and a water seal not made of metal, but of much more aesthetic and hygienic faience.

Toilet
Thomas Twyford toilet

The unit called Unitas (Latin for "Unity") was equipped with a Krepper design top tank, as well as a lifting wooden seat. This masterpiece became the real star of the 1884 International Health Exhibition in London. It was this model that determined the appearance of the modern toilet bowl and, according to one version, gave it a name (there is another version - the toilet bowl allegedly got its name from the name of the Spanish company Unitas, which supplied water closets to Russia).

Author: S.Apresov

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