Flush Toilet - History

History

As with many inventions, the flush toilet was the result of a long development. Therefore, instead of a single name and date, there follows a list of significant contributions to the history of the device.

• circa 31st century BC: Britain's oldest neolithic village, Skara Brae, Orkney, used neolithic hydraulic technology. The village's design used a river and connecting drainage system to wash waste away.
• circa 26th century BC: Flush toilets were first used in the Indus Valley Civilization. The cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had a flush toilet in almost every house, attached to a sophisticated sewage system. See also Hydraulic engineering of the Indus Valley Civilization.
• circa 18th century BC: Flush toilet constructed at Knossos on Minoan Crete
• circa 15th century BC: Flush toilets used in the Minoan city of Akrotiri.
• 9th century BC: Flush toilets on Bahrain Island.
• 1st to 5th centuries AD: Flush toilets were used throughout the Roman Empire. Some examples include those at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in Britain. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the technology was lost in the West.
• 1206: The Arab or Kurdish inventor Al-Jazari invented a hand washing device incorporating the flush mechanism now used in modern flush toilets. His device features a mechanism for filling the basin with water. When the user pulls the lever, the water drains and the mechanism refills the basin.
• 1596: Sir John Harington (1561–1612) published A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax, describing a forerunner to the modern flush toilet installed at his house at Kelston. The design had a flush valve to let water out of the tank, and a wash-down design to empty the bowl. He installed one for his godmother Queen Elizabeth I at Richmond Palace, although she refused to use it because it made too much noise. The Ajax was not taken up on a wide scale in England, but was adopted in France under the name Angrez.
• 1738: A valve-type flush toilet was invented by J. F. Brondel.
• 1775: Alexander Cummings invented the S-trap (British patent no. 814?), still in use today, which uses standing water to seal the outlet of the bowl, preventing the escape of foul air from the sewer. His design had a sliding valve in the bowl outlet above the trap.
• 1777: Samuel Prosser invented and patented the 'plunger closet'.
• 1778: Joseph Bramah invented a hinged valve or 'crank valve' that sealed the bottom of the bowl, and a float valve system for the flush tank. His design was used mainly on boats.
• 1851: The first popularized public water closets were exhibited at The Crystal Palace and these became the first public toilets. They had attendants dressed in white and customers were charged a penny for use. This is supposedly the origin of the phrase "To spend a penny" which did not appear in print until the 1940s.
• 1852: George Jennings invented a wash-out design with a shallow pan emptying into an S-trap.
• 1857: The first American patent for a toilet, the 'plunger closet', was granted.
• 1858: The first flush toilets on the European continent may have been the three "waterclosets" installed in the new town house of banker Nicolay August Andresen on 6 Kirkegaten in Christiania, insured in January 1859. The toilets were probably imported from Britain, as they were referred to by the English term "waterclosets" in the insurance ledger.
• 1859: By the end of the 1850s building codes suggest most new middle-class homes in British cities were equipped with a water closet.
• 1860: Another early watercloset on the European continent was also imported from Britain. It was installed in the rooms of Queen Victoria in Ehrenburg Palace (Coburg, Germany); she was the only one who was allowed to use it.
• 1880s: Thomas Crapper's plumbing company built flush toilets of Giblin's design. Although not the original inventor, Crapper popularized the siphon system for emptying the tank, replacing the earlier floating valve system which was prone to leaks. Some of Crapper's designs were made by Thomas Twyford. The similarity between Crapper's name and the much older word crap is a coincidence.
• 1885: The first modern pedestal 'flush-down' toilet was demonstrated by Frederick Humpherson of the Beaufort Works, Chelsea, England.
• 1885: Thomas Twyford built the first one-piece ceramic toilet using the flush-out siphon design by J. G. Jennings.
• 1898: Albert Giblin received British patent 4990 for the "Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer", a siphon discharge system.
• 1906: William Elvis Sloan invented the Flushometer, which used pressurized water directly from the supply line for faster recycle time between flushes. The Flushometer is still in use today in public restrooms worldwide.
• 1907: Thomas MacAvity Stewart of Saint John, New Brunswick patented the vortex-flushing toilet bowl, which creates a self-cleansing effect.
• 1980: Bruce Thompson, working for Caroma in Australia, developed the Duoset cistern with two buttons and two flush volumes as a water-saving measure. Modern versions of the Duoset are now available worldwide, and save the average household 67% of their normal water usage.