The History of Toilets
Summary
TLDRThis video explores the evolution of toilets from ancient times to modern-day conveniences. It delves into the first known toilet and sewer system in the Indus Valley, Egyptian water conservation methods, and the Han Dynasty's pig waste recycling. The script also covers Roman communal bathrooms, medieval castle garderobes, and the rise of indoor plumbing. It highlights key figures like Sir John Harington, who invented a flush toilet, and Thomas Crapper, known for marketing toilets. The video concludes with the impact of public toilets and the significance of sanitation in preventing diseases.
Takeaways
- 🚽 The first known toilets with a sewer system appeared in 2500 BC in Northern India and Pakistan, featuring drain pipes and a central sewage system.
- 🏺 Ancient Egyptians used water conservation in their toilet design, with limestone seats for the wealthy and sand pits for the commoners.
- 🐷 During China's Han Dynasty, toilets were connected to pig pens, where waste was used as pig feed and later as fertilizer.
- 🛂 Roman bathrooms were social spaces with communal toilets and no privacy, using running water from aqueducts for flushing.
- 🏰 Medieval castles utilized 'garderobes' with chutes that led waste to moats or cesspits, harnessing gravity for waste disposal.
- 🏺 Chamber pots were used before indoor flushing toilets, often kept as decorative items in homes until the mid-20th century.
- 👑 Sir John Harington invented a flush toilet in the late 16th century, but his political writings overshadowed his sanitary invention.
- 🚹 The flushable toilet gained popularity in the mid-18th century with innovations by Alexander Cumming and John Braham, leading to widespread use.
- 👨💼 Thomas Crapper, despite the humorous association, did not invent the toilet but was instrumental in its marketing and improvement.
- 👨🔧 George Jennings introduced public flush toilets in London, initially met with skepticism but eventually becoming a public necessity.
- 🏫 The dry toilet was invented by Henry Moule in 1873 as a waterless alternative, but it did not gain widespread acceptance, preserving the dominance of wet toilets.
Q & A
What was the first known toilet and sewer system like?
-The first known toilet and sewer system appeared in 2500 BC in Northern India and Pakistan. Houses in the Indus Valley had rooms dedicated to defecation with drain pipes leading to a central sewage system that could be flushed by dumping water into the toilet.
How did the ancient Egyptians conserve water in their toilets?
-Ancient Egyptians used toilets designed with water conservation in mind. They reused water for agriculture and gardening, and the wealthy used limestone seats with sand-filled containers to collect waste, which was later cleaned by servants.
How did the Han Dynasty in China utilize human waste?
-During the Han Dynasty, farmers constructed toilets that were directly fed back into pig pens. The waste was consumed by pigs and then used as fertilizer, eliminating the need for a separate sanitation system.
What was the social aspect of Roman toilets?
-Roman toilets were social scenes with long stone or wooden benches and no dividers between the holes. They were built to hover above the ground for easier flushing and were flushed using the sewage system that ran throughout the city.
How did medieval castles handle waste disposal?
-Medieval castles used garderobes, rooms with chutes that led to a moat or communal cesspit, to dispose of waste. This relied on gravity to move waste away from the castle.
What were chamber pots and why were they used?
-Chamber pots were small metal or ceramic containers used to hold waste before indoor plumbing was common. They were used at night or when outdoor facilities were inconvenient, and were later emptied into pools or sometimes thrown out windows.
Who invented the flush toilet in the late 16th century?
-Sir John Harington, a controversial writer, invented a flush toilet in the late 16th century. His design included an elevated cistern that dumped water into the toilet bowl and removed waste via a chain pull.
What was the S-trap and who invented it?
-The S-trap was invented by Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming. It allowed water to sit in the bowl, acting as a barrier against foul smells from sewage and gas.
Why is Thomas Crapper often falsely credited as the inventor of the modern toilet?
-Thomas Crapper is often falsely credited as the inventor of the modern toilet due to the humorous and ironic nature of his last name and his significant role in marketing and popularizing toilet designs, despite not being the actual inventor.
Who was George Jennings and what was his contribution to public sanitation?
-George Jennings was a sanitation engineer who first proposed the idea of installing public flush toilets throughout London. He designed a series of toilets for an art exhibit in 1851 that cost a penny per use and were very popular.
What was the dry toilet and why was it invented?
-The dry toilet was invented by Henry Moule in 1873 as a way to use the bathroom without water as the flushing mechanism. It diverted waste or used covering material like peat to absorb liquid, aiming to reduce maintenance costs and eliminate odors associated with sewage systems.
Outlines
🚽 The Evolution of Toilets: From Ancient to Modern
This paragraph delves into the historical development of toilets, starting with the earliest known toilet and sewer system in the Indus Valley Civilization around 2500 BC. It highlights the advanced nature of these early systems, which included dedicated rooms for defecation and sophisticated drainage with flush mechanisms. The script then contrasts this with the sanitation practices of Ancient Egypt, where toilets were water conservation-oriented, and the Roman Empire, known for its social bathroom culture. It also touches upon the Han Dynasty's practice of feeding human waste directly to pigs, and the medieval castles' use of gravity for waste disposal. The paragraph concludes with the introduction of the flush toilet in the 20th century, marking a significant shift from the earlier, often unsanitary methods.
🌟 The Invention and Popularization of Flush Toilets
This section focuses on the invention and subsequent popularization of the flush toilet. It begins with Sir John Harington's 16th-century invention, which was overshadowed by his controversial writings. The narrative then shifts to the 18th century, where Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming and English inventor John Brahma made significant contributions to the modern flushing toilet with the S-trap and the hinged flap valve, respectively. The paragraph also discusses the role of Thomas Crapper in marketing toilets, despite the common misconception that he invented them. It details how Crapper's U-bend plumbing trap and his showrooms helped to popularize indoor plumbing. Lastly, it mentions George Jennings, who first proposed and implemented public flush toilets in London, despite initial resistance from the government.
🏛️ The Advent of Public Toilets and the Impact on Sanitation
The final paragraph discusses the introduction of public toilets and their impact on public health and sanitation. It begins with the story of George Jennings, who, after the success of his pay-per-use toilets at an art exhibit, proposed the idea of public toilets in London. Despite initial setbacks and the government's reluctance, public toilets eventually became a reality. The paragraph also addresses the invention of the dry toilet by Henry Moule in response to the unsanitary conditions that contributed to the spread of diseases like cholera. The dry toilet, which used peat as a covering material, was an innovative solution to the problem of maintaining hygiene without water. The paragraph concludes with a humorous question about the viewer's current location, suggesting they might be watching from a toilet, and encourages handwashing and further exploration of Weird History's content.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Toilet
💡Sewer System
💡Indus Valley Civilization
💡Egyptian Toilets
💡Han Dynasty
💡Roman Bathrooms
💡Medieval Castle Toilets
💡Chamber Pots
💡Flush Toilet
💡Thomas Crapper
💡Public Flush Toilets
Highlights
The first known toilet and sewer system appeared in 2500 BC in Northern India and Pakistan.
Indus Valley houses had rooms dedicated to defecation with drain pipes leading to a central sewage system.
Ancient Egyptian toilets were water conservation-focused, using sand instead of water.
During the Han Dynasty in China, toilets were connected to pig pens for waste to be eaten by pigs.
Roman bathrooms were social scenes with long benches and no dividers for privacy.
Medieval castles used 'garderobes' with chutes leading to a moat or cesspit for waste disposal.
Before indoor flushing toilets, people used chamber pots, which were later emptied into cesspools or thrown out windows.
Sir John Harington invented a flush toilet in the late 16th century, but it was not widely adopted.
The flushable toilet gained popularity in the mid-18th century with advancements by Alexander Cumming and John Brahma.
Thomas Crapper is often mistakenly credited as the inventor of the modern toilet, but he was a prominent marketer of toilet designs.
George Jennings was the first to propose public flush toilets in London, which were initially met with skepticism.
The dry toilet was invented by Henry Moule in 1873 as a waterless alternative to traditional toilets.
The history of toilets reflects a transition from unsanitary conditions to modern, hygienic facilities.
Public toilets became more accepted and widespread as urban populations grew and sanitation became a public health concern.
The evolution of toilets shows how cultural practices and technological innovations have shaped modern conveniences.
Transcripts
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Everybody poops and almost always in a toilet.
But it wasn't always the glamorous, solo activity
it is today.
It used to be a weird group thing
in some places and very disturbingly,
pig food in others.
So how did we go from wildly defecating in the streets
to sitting comfortably on a piece of art?
Today, we're going to look at the history of toilets.
But before we plop down, be sure to subscribe to Weird History
and let us know about what modern-day conveniences
you would like to hear more about.
Now let's go see a man about a horse.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The first known toilet and sewer system
showed up on the scene in 2500 BC in Northern India
and Pakistan.
Way, way ahead of their time, houses in the Indus Valley
could, in theory, list a bathroom in the home listing
with rooms dedicated solely for numbers one and two, sometimes
three.
These rooms contained drain pipes
that led to a central sewage system, which
could be flushed by simply dumping water into the toilet.
Sounds like a very familiar process so far.
Nothing weird yet.
Sewage was carried through a simple grid
system in pipes made of brick and terracotta or all
the necessary components to build a house in Florida.
This allowed the waste to be carried
from multiple floors of the home and dumped
into the nearest body of water or what we today call Florida.
These pipes were relatively sophisticated
with accessible utility holes that led from the street
to the main drainage line and wooden screens built
into the end of the drainage lines to block solid waste.
Both of these were crafted to make
maintaining the sewers as easy and less gross as possible.
While many of the elements of this ancient infrastructure
do strongly resemble what we use today,
it would take thousands of very messy years
before Western societies would catch up
with this sanitation system.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For a society that worshipped cats,
it's only appropriate the Egyptians also
used a bathroom like one.
Ancient Egyptian toilets were designed specifically
with water conservation in mind.
They, in general, went hard on saving,
believing in only using H2O with the intent to reuse it.
With no running water in Egyptian homes,
even with dedicated rooms in which to bathe,
Egyptians would pour water onto themselves
at bath time, which was collected in jars
and reused for agriculture and gardening.
The Egyptian 1% would perch their rich behinds
onto limestone seats to relieve themselves
into containers filled with sand, which
would be cleaned out by the servants
or what today is called owning a cat.
The lower plebeian class would also relieve themselves
in pits of sand.
But their poor garbage butts had to settle
for a dumb wooden stool with a hole cut
in the middle, instead of a more glorious,
non-splintery limestone.
What a dump for a dump.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
If you weren't hungry before watching this video,
you're about to be starving, particularly for a bacon treat.
During the Han Dynasty in China, farmers
constructed toilets that were directly
fed back into their pig pens.
Though these toilets looked similar
to a traditional outhouse, there was one small difference.
Rather than the waste feeding into a hole in the ground,
it fed into the hole of a pig's face.
The waste was routed into the pig pen,
which the pigs, being pigs, would then
consume as a light snack.
Once this was digested, the waste
from this human waste turned into pig waste,
would be used as fertilizer, thus eliminating the need
for a sanitation system.
Include that in a verse of the circle of life, cowards.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Roman bathrooms sounded like quite the social scene.
Their bathrooms consisted of long stone or wooden benches
with holes scattered about for users
to take care of their business, while in a comfortable sitting
position.
These elevated bench toilets were purposely
built to hover 1 to 2 feet above the ground
to make it easier to flush the water through,
using the sewage system that ran throughout the city.
And, no, there were no dividers between bench holes,
making going to the bathroom more of a group
social activity than a private moment to oneself.
Running water directed from Rome's aqueducts
flushed out the troughs beneath the toilets.
While a great way to flush away waste,
it was a bad way to prevent rat attacks
from open sewer lines and occasional fires
from built-up methane.
But when it comes to ancient toilet systems, you win some
and you lose some.
A bunch of potential rats on fire,
however, can probably go in the losing column.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Medieval castle toilets relied on the magical power of gravity
to do most of the heavy lifting of taking waste
to a more desirable place away from the castle.
Castles were equipped with rooms dedicated for answering
the call of nature.
But they were called garderobes, not bathrooms.
Garderobes were nothing to write home about, with very few bells
or whistles.
The humble garderobe was a small room
with chutes that led to a moat or communal cesspit
for the dung to float away or around the castle.
If the point of the moat is to keep enemies out of the castle,
a good addition to one would be floating poo
as a deterrent for crossing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Before the indoor flushing toilets
were popularized in the 20th century,
most people had to wander down to local cesspools
in order to relieve themselves, a pretty nifty inconvenience
for something where a convenience is paramount.
This could also be a potentially hazardous trip
to take at night.
So rather than march down to a lovely sounding,
local cesspool, people would have chamber pots in the room.
Chamber pots were small metal or ceramic containers
designed to hold waste that were later emptied into pools
or just sort of casually thrown out the window, a fun thing
to be on the lookout for when walking
underneath a window, surely.
They remained a popular way to go to the bathroom
until World War II and are even used today
in some parts of the world where indoor plumbing is still
not a thing.
Since chamber pots were a regular fixture
in people's homes, they weren't afraid to jazz them up a bit,
turning them into less of a pot to piss in and more
of a fun little home decoration to whiz in.
Some were ornate and made of ceramic or fine china.
And others were encased in decorative boxes.
Some were designed with verses like, use me well and keep
me clean and I'll not tell what I've
seen, which now, of course, has been reduced to simply,
live, laugh, love.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Sir John Harington was a controversial writer known
for his risqué poetry and political writings.
He also invented a flush toilet in the late 16th century
as one typically does while writing poetry.
In The Metamorphosis of Ajax, Harington described the device
as an elevated cistern that dumped water into the toilet
bowl and removed waste via the pulling of a chain
or what sounds remarkably like a current day toilet.
Unfortunately, The Metamorphosis of Ajax
was also a thinly veiled criticism
of the English government.
So the invention of a toilet somehow sandwiched
between critiques of the monarchy
presumably got thrown out with the bathwater,
as they say, for nearly two centuries.
Queen Elizabeth I, however, did have
one built for herself, which is probably
not the takeaway Harington was aiming
for when it came to a queen reading
his anti-government pamphlet.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It wasn't until the mid-18th century
when the flushable toilet was beginning
to truly have a moment.
Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming and English inventor
John Brahma both developed the advanced plumbing devices
that assisted in the creation of the modern-day flushing toilet.
Cumming created the S-trap, which allowed the water
to sit in the bowl and act as a barrier against the foul smell
of sewage and gas and also, a popular source of drinking
water for bad dogs.
Though Harington technically was the first to invent the toilet,
it was Cumming who held the patent.
It was during the installation process of Cumming's design
when Braham developed a valve with a hinged flap that
sealed the water in the bowl.
Thanks to these two advances in the design of the toilet,
these babies began selling like hot cakes
with water closets growing in popularity
throughout the mid-18th and 19th centuries.
After World War I, all new buildings built in the UK
were required to include an indoor toilet.
We've come a long way from throwing our dung
out the window.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Given his last name and how hilarious and ironic
it would be, Thomas Crapper is often
falsely credited as the inventor of the modern toilet.
In reality, Crapper was more like the band, Kiss,
of toilets.
He didn't invent the toilet, but he sure
knew how to market the crap out of it.
An early sanitation pioneer, Crapper
is credited for inventing the oddly beautiful U-bend plumbing
trap that is still used in toilets and sinks today.
Crapper displayed his toilet products in showrooms
and tried to sell his sanitation designs to the wealthy.
And, yes, Crapper was not the inventor
of the flushing toilet.
But when people would draw the conclusion,
he didn't go out of his way to correct them.
Why ruin it?
It was better this way.
Edward VII hired him to install dozens of indoor bathrooms
in several royal palaces, which contributed to his fame.
But mostly, of course, it was that his last name was Crapper,
and his whole life was toilets.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
George Jennings, a sanitation engineer and autour toilet
inventor, was the first to propose the idea of installing
public flush toilets throughout London.
Jennings designed a series of toilets for use
at an art exhibit in 1851 that cost a penny per use.
Jennings' art toilets that cost money for use
were a big hit, especially with poorer folk who couldn't afford
a flush toilet of their own, but could
afford a penny to use one.
With these toilets being a bona fide hit,
Jennings proposed to build public facilities
at the Royal Exchange, a major commerce and business
sector in London.
The government ignored this idea at first with a strange belief
that nobody would want a public bathroom,
claiming the results of several trial public bathrooms
proved they were bunk.
The Royal Society of Arts, the money
behind Jennings' public toilets at the art show,
installed a handful of test pay toilets
around London, soon after to see if it was a thing people
wanted.
The move ended up being a financial catastrophe,
even if its heart was in the right place.
In 1885, London officials finally
came around on Jennings' idea several years
after the plumber passed away.
The first facilities were built at the Royal Exchange,
but not by Jennings' company, which
seems like kind of a real jerk move by the Royal Exchange.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
As the population began to boom, so did
contagious diseases that spread like
wildfire, due to widespread unsanitary conditions.
Cholera, in particular, was the contagious disease du jour
whose spreading was aided greatly
by poor sanitation systems.
Because of this, the dry toilet was invented as a way
to use the bathroom without water as the flushing
mechanism.
But rather, it would divert waste
or use covering material such as peat to absorb the liquid.
First invented by an English priest named
Henry Moule with a patent in 1873,
he was able to get the design in schools and public hospitals
in England and India.
But despite cutting maintenance costs
and eliminating odors famously associated with sewage systems,
his design did not catch on.
We can thank this failure today for all of our wet toilets.
So what do you think?
Are you watching this video from a toilet?
We bet you are.
Be sure to wash your hands and check out
some of these other fine videos from our Weird History.
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