WEBVTT - What's the History (and Future) of Toilets? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.000 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:10.800 Lauren Vogel Bomb Here, consider the flush toilet. It's a 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.000 fascinating device if you think about it. This giant porcelain 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.200 chair is installed into every modern American bathroom, using up 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.000 gallons of precious drinking water every day to whisk your 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.520 urinine feces into oblivion. Better known as the municipal wastewater 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:27.479 treatment plant nearest you every time you flush. But have 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:30.120 you ever considered what else we could be doing with 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:33.280 our poop and p You probably don't really want to 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.720 think about it, and neither does pretty much anybody else, 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.400 which is why the flush toilet we twenty first century 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.279 humans use hasn't changed much since it was first patented 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.360 in seventeen seventy five by Scottish watchmaker named Alexander Cumming. 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.839 Cummings toilet was a slightly altered version of the commode 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:51.400 designed for Queen Elizabeth the First by her godson, Sir 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:55.600 John Harrington's in two. Cummings had an S shaped pipe 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:59.000 to trap bad odors, while Harrington's had not, of course, 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.200 self flushing toilet, heated seats and those vacuum potties like 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:04.520 you see on airplanes and tour buses came later, but 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.000 our one and done attitude towards commode innovation probably comes 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:10.119 from the fact that we simply don't want to think 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:14.640 about poop that much. We spoke with Diana mcdonnaugh, a 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.480 professor of industrial design in the Beckman Institute of Advanced 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.680 Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.360 She said, within the American culture, there is still a 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.720 resistance and reluctance to discuss body waste. The toilet has 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.240 remained relatively unexplored. I think because we're failing to realize that, 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:34.360 to quote a British saying, where there is muck, there's brass. 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.480 We are failing to see the potential opportunity our modest 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.440 toilet is offering us because the notion of immersing yourself 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:42.679 in such a product makes us all feel so uncomfortable. 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:46.800 But going to the bathroom isn't something we've always been 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.240 squeamish about. Long ago, it was just another experience, an 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:54.040 opportunity for relaxation and hanging out. The ancient Romans used 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.120 toilet time as a time to catch up with their friends. 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:00.120 In the year threef B. C Rome had one and 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.440 forty four bustling public toilets lined with stone benches with 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.760 keyhole shaped cutouts situated all along them, where people would 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.960 sit together and do their business and maybe some gossiping too. 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.280 Later in medieval England, you could be walking down the 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:15.560 street and someone might throw the contents of their chamber 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.720 pot out the window onto you. Oops. They might say 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.360 sorry about it, but it would kind of be on 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.480 you for walking too close to their house. Fancier medieval 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.160 people used a guard robe, a little closet stuck onto 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:28.760 the side of a castle with a hole in the 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:31.960 floor that emptied into a moat or cesspit. Clothes were 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:33.720 also kept in the guard robe, but because it was 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:35.840 that stench of human waste would keep the fleas and 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:38.840 moths out of the garments. Public guarter robes in London 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.360 emptied directly into the Thames, which was an unbelievably poor 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.639 public health move. As the population of Europe grew over 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:47.760 the course of the eighteen hundreds, up to a hundred 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.280 people would share the same public guarter robe, and the 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.520 waist just washed into the rivers, tainting the drinking water supply, 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:56.560 which explains why so many outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and 0:02:56.639 --> 0:03:00.720 other water borne diseases bedeviled nineteenth century Europeans, resulting in 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.280 more than half the working class population dying before the 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.480 age of five. It was a mess as a result 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:10.160 of a particularly hot summer in London in eighteen fifty eight, 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:12.360 when the smell of rotting sewage made living in the 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:16.480 city completely unbearable. Parliament commissioned the construction of the London Sewer, 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.200 which was finished in eighteen sixty five. Deaths resulting from 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.560 waterborne diseases plummeted, and cities all over the world followed 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:27.440 suit and constructed their own sanitary sewers. The toilet patented 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.320 by Coming eventually became standard in houses in wealthy countries 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.520 all over the world, along with slight variations patented by 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.240 others like Thomas Crapper, yes that's his real name, whose 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.720 contributions to the overall design of the toilet were minimal, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:41.880 but whose legacy in endoors because he made sure his 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.160 name was visible on all of his products. And hey, 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:47.640 it's great that fewer people are dying due to poor 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.600 sanitation in these places anymore, But the toilet is due 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.720 for an upgrade, so what do we need our new 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:58.440 toilets to do? McDonough said, toilets offer a relatively unexplored 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.800 territory that offers signific potential in respect to healthy living 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:05.280 and healthy aging. As individuals are taking more responsibility for 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.280 their health, eating habits, and well being, the bathroom offers 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.680 a somewhat blank canvas for us to integrate intuitive technology 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.680 to support the individual. Imagine a toilet that could tell 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:17.279 you how hydrated you were, whether you were deficient in 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.039 particular vitamins, warn you of blood in your stools, and 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:23.320 changes in your hormones. We literally flush all that information 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.640 away each day in the form of waste matter, so 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:28.640 we could find out a lot about our own health 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.400 from our toilets. But according to the Bill and Melinda 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:35.680 Gates Foundation, which launched their Reinvent the Toilet Challenge back in, 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:37.760 the next generation of toilets will also be able to 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.919 kill pathogens, compost human waste, and keep up with the 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:43.920 fast urbanization of the twenty first century. And all that 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:48.080 without sewer infrastructure, electricity, or a water source. They might 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.440 even be able to mine our waste for valuable elements 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.680 like phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium, and separate solid and liquid 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:55.520 waste in order to use them to make things like 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.360 building supplies. But will the new toilets look very much 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:01.600 different from the in your bathroom now or the one 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:04.560 Sir John Harrington made for Queen Elizabeth in the sixteenth century. 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:13.880 Probably not much, unless you've got any bright ideas. Today's 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:16.200 episode was written by Jessline Shields and produced by Tyler 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:18.440 Clang for I Heeart Media and How Stuff Works. For 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:20.360 more on this and lots of other topics, visit our 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:33.440 home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.