In 1596, a flush toilet was invented and built for Britain's Queen Elizabeth I by her Godson, Sir John Harrington. It is said that she refused to use it because it was too noisy. The first patent for the flushing toilet was issued to Alexander Cummings in 1775.
The Indus Valley Civilisation in northwestern India and Pakistan was home to the world's first known urban sanitation systems. In Mohenjo-Daro ( c. 2800 BC), toilets were built into the outer walls of homes. These toilets had vertical chutes, via which waste was disposed of into cesspits or street drains.
Between 3,500 and 3,000 B.C, Sumerians in Mesopotamia built the oldest toilets known to date. They consisted of deep pits lined with stacked ceramic tubes, on which users would sit. The solid excreta remained in the container and liquid seeped out through holes in it.
The first modern flushable toilet was described in 1596 by Sir John Harington, an English courtier and the godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Harington's device called for a 2-foot-deep oval bowl waterproofed with pitch, resin and wax and fed by water from an upstairs cistern.
Unlike the Romans, there were little to no sewer systems. Most toilets lead down into a cesspool under the house or outside the house. Most ordinary people had an outhouse or just dumped their waste into the street. It wasn't until 1859 that the first planned sewer systems were built in both America and England.
The use of toilet paper first started in ancient China around the 2nd century BC.
The Romans cleaned their behinds with sea sponges attached to a stick, and the gutter supplied clean flowing water to dip the sponges in. This soft, gentle tool was called a tersorium, which literally meant “a wiping thing.” The Romans liked to move their bowels in comfort.
The toilets displayed the company logo 'Thomas Crapper & Co Ltd'. The US soldiers stationed in England at the time started referring to the toilet as “the Crapper” and brought that slang term back with them to the United States. The slang word for toilet became more widely taken up and is still being used today.
One such rule is found in Switzerland and involves the flushing of a toilet. While it's not technically illegal, flushing the toilet after 10 pm in Switzerland is strongly frowned upon. This is because the sound of a toilet flush late at night has been deemed as noise pollution by the Swiss government.
Before the availability of mass produced toilet paper in the mid-1800s, humans had to resort to using what was free and available, even if it didn't provide the most effective (or comfortable) results. Options included rocks, leaves, grass, moss, animal fur, corn cobs, coconut husks, sticks, sand, and sea shells.
The use of sit-down toilets in the Western world is a relatively recent development, beginning in the 19th century with the advent of indoor plumbing.
Toilet paper was not yet invented, so most colonial people used leaves or corn cobs. Yes, corn cobs! Privies were very unsanitary by our modern standard and most people did not wash their hands after using the bathrooms because they did not know about germs or bacteria. Yuck!
Cesspits, or cesspools, were cavities dug into the ground that were ideally brick-lined, into which both liquid and solid human waste were dumped—usually along with other domestic rubbish.
The high tank toilet.
These toilets had a separation of tank from bowl with the tank sitting significantly higher than the bowl. This was a purposeful design that allowed gravity to work with the water to maximize flushing power.
The art and practice of indoor plumbing took nearly a century to develop, starting in about the 1840s. In 1940 nearly half of houses lacked hot piped water, a bathtub or shower, or a flush toilet. Over a third of houses didn't have a flush toilet.
However, in countries like Turkey, Greece, and Egypt, you can't flush it. This is because the narrow pipes and sewer systems struggle to break down toilet paper and are prone to clogging.
Here are 10 of the country's most bizarre rules that will especially surprise newcomers: After 10 pm it is illegal to slam car doors, wear high heels in your apartment or flush the toilet because it could disturb the neighbors.
Most public toilets are not free, costing around 1CHF to 2CHF. You can search for nearby public toilets at www.wc-guide.ch, which also lets you filter for disabled-friendly restrooms.
Secondly but most notable amongst historians, John was the name of the first man credited with inventing the first flushing toilet. John Harington was born during the time in which Queen Elizabeth reigned. His mother was a member of the Queen's chamber.
The term “Jerry” was previously used to refer to a “chamber pot" — a vessel used to relieve oneself at night prior to indoor toilet facilities becoming commonplace (many British homes had an outhouse at the end of the garden as it was considered unsanitary to have such a thing inside the home, especially when you ...
Native Americans used twigs, dry grass, small stones, and even oyster or clam shells.
The seats of the toilets at Roman baths are close together. And there is little historical evidence that men and women had separate bathroom (or bathing) facilities. Some modicum of privacy was provided by the Roman's loose togas, since they were hiked up rather than pulled down.
Other ways of wiping before the invention of toilet paper
Early North American settlers used corn cobs. They were abundant, they were soft and they were easy to handle. Sailors used something called a 'tow rag'. A tow rag was a long piece of frayed rope that dangled in the water.