WEBVTT - TechStuff Gets Flushed 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:11.960 Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from Hey there, 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:14.920 and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Sickland and joining 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:19.400 me in the studio, a true celebrity man among men. 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:26.239 Josh Clark stuff, you should know. I want to apologize 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:29.680 in advance. I'm not feeling very charming today. It's okay, Josh, 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.800 It's all right. I mean because Josh at A three 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:37.280 is like normal human, like an eight point oh go on. 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.760 That was nice. I gave Josh, of course, the opportunity 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.800 to pick a topic for, you know, something that we 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:47.560 could cover here on tech Stuff, and we were just 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.519 kind of bandying about ideas and you actually keep up 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.280 with one of the most basic pieces of technology that 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.280 we're all familiar with, we've all used, but I have 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:02.120 somehow never covered it in the near seven hundred episodes 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.240 of Tech Stuff. I'll bet you've covered them before. Oh yeah, 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:09.399 just not on the show. Uh six episodes. This is 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.440 episode I feel very honored to be on this one. 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:18.360 So yeah, congratulations, thank you, thank you. Yeah. So we 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:23.960 are talking a mount toilets today. Yeah, it's gonna be uh, 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.199 this episode is going to be flush with puns. Man, 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.920 I can't take this alright, and I know it's bad already, right, 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.080 so before I really get into that, you know, there 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:35.679 will obviously be some levity in this, but this is 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.640 actually a very serious topic. And to kind of illustrate that, 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.240 I wanted to mention something else. Now this is this 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.640 is half a year away from us, but November nineteen 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:50.720 is World Toilet Day, which at first sounds kind of comedic, right, 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.880 I think it's hilarious. It sounds funny. It's it's an 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:58.200 event hosted by the World Toilet Organization. Still sounds at 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:00.920 first when you think about it, because I mean, toilet 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:03.840 humor has become like a real it's a real industry 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.400 into itself. But this is not about humor. It's actually 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:09.360 the purpose of the day, and the purpose of the 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.440 organization is to help provide support for getting proper sanitation 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:19.519 to the world's population. According to that organization, of the 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:25.480 world's population still practices open defecation. That's a billion people. 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:27.440 I mean, I knew a lot of people, did I 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.160 didn't realize it was that high a percentage. Now I 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.880 saw a figure back in I think two thousand nine 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.640 that was two point five billion people. So clearly we've 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:41.760 made some great strides in in raising sanitation levels, but 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:43.840 there's still so much work to be done. And I 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.880 mean this is obviously something that we have to be 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:51.280 concerned with because it can lead to you know, pandemics 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.080 or at least a really bad outbreak of disease, not 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.399 to mention just unpleasant living condition. Well, you know what's 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.560 funny is um. I think part of it also is 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.560 not just that people practice open defecation, but that the 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.960 a lot of them don't have access to sanitary drinking 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.839 water as a result of their of their waste disposal. UM. 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:16.080 But I have there are places, especially in um parts 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:20.000 of rural India, where open defecation is practiced where the 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:22.320 people are like you can put toilets in here all 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.919 day long, we're not going to use them because we 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:29.799 find open defecation as part of like wholesome country living 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:31.960 is the way that I've seen it put like it's 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.200 just part and parcel with being outside and you know, 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:38.040 watching a squirrel run past you while you're pooping, that 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.560 kind of thing, and like really taken in the whole scene. 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.000 It's a cultural thing at that point. Yeah, where it 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.640 goes beyond, it goes beyond, like it's it's not necessarily 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:50.880 just the lack of facilities. This has become a way 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.400 of life. I could understand that. I mean, I know 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.920 there was even some reluctance in Japan to go from 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:04.040 the UH the more trough like toilets that they used to. Yeah, 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.480 there's there's much smaller percentage of the toilets in Japan 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.640 are those, but they still do exist. But there was 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:15.880 a large UH hesitate to use the word, movement trend 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:18.680 to going toward more Western style toilets over the last 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.680 couple of years. I know, I'm sorry, it's gonna happen. 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.240 Chris Palette is only here in spirit, but he is here. 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.680 You're channeling him pretty hard. Yeah, so let's go with 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:32.599 a little history lesson before we get into how toilets 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:36.240 actually work. Now, if you're looking for the earliest evidence 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:41.599 of organized waste management systems, you look at Mesopotamia, which 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.919 makes sense because that's where the original civilizations were. Yeah, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.560 it's also a great Bifo song, But this would be 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:53.080 back at the c E around approximately around that era, 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.440 when you would see these organized systems for waste management. 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:59.719 One thing I thought was really interesting was I watched 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:06.360 a documentary about a Neolithic village that was on the 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:11.680 Orkney Islands, uh in Scotland. Um, we call it scare Bray. 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.400 That's the name we've given it. Because any actual records 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.039 of this village haven't existed for more than a couple 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.640 of thousand years. This village was forgotten. No one knew 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.680 it was even there until there was a major storm 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.360 that washed away some of the land that had grown 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:33.000 up built up around on top of the village. Is amazing. 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:38.400 Right when it was discovered, you immediately had a and uh, 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.880 there was an expedition, let's say, to uncover the village, 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:45.440 but it was not led by anyone who's ever been 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.800 actually identified. In other words, it was treasure hunters. I 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.520 didn't probably didn't find anything really of value there. There 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.719 was certainly no you know, hordes of gold and diamonds 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.560 and jewels there. Uh. And it wouldn't be until the 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.600 nineteen thirties that a more or an eye archaeological dig 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.760 would take place. And after that there was another storm 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:08.000 and they had to actually shore up the area to 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:10.839 protect it as an archaeological site. And what they found 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.400 was that this tiny village, which dates to around three 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:19.320 thousand BC, in Scotland had these homes that were very sophisticated. 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.360 You would walk in there'd be a large bed on 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:24.839 the right hand side, a smaller bed on the left, 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:30.200 which mirrors regular practices of the time where the husband 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.880 and wife. The husband would have the larger of two beds. 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:38.239 They had a fire pit hearth, but they also had 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:45.039 a essentially a toilet. They had a stone cabinet with 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:47.560 a hole cut so that you could sit down on it, 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.240 with channels that lead out to the ocean, and ocean 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:55.400 water with the tides would actually flush this. So these 0:06:55.400 --> 0:07:00.159 were flushing toilets. They weren't manual flush title flush, so 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:03.240 you had to wait, hey it's still flushed. Yeah, that's 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.160 the important point in this took the waste away, right Yeah. Yeah, 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.320 so all the way back to three thousand BC. Uh, 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:14.920 the actual the whole area of scare breaks fascinating, So 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.280 definitely look into that a get a chance. I mean, 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:21.280 I've seen him before. I've seen just the settlement pictures 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.560 of the settlement. It is pretty advanced. You don't think 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.240 of the Orkney Islands and three thousand b C. Is 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:32.080 you know, the seed of civilization technology. But yeah, they 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:34.800 had something going on. It's pretty surprising, yeah, because I mean, 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:40.360 you know, when I think of of society civilization in 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:45.800 the British Islands, I'm thinking closer to the Roman times. 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.400 But it's pretty amazing how sophisticated was even back then. Uh. 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.560 Ancient Greeks also they used sewage systems to channel waste 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.720 away from living quarters. The Romans went even further. They 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:01.680 would have these, especially if you were a very wealthy 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:06.160 or powerful Roman, you might have a pretty styling you know, bathroom, 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:14.080 heated seats, heated marble seats, um. And it maybe private 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.840 from what I understood, but for the most part, public 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:22.480 bathrooms really took the public thing to the nth degree, 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.160 where it was just like basically a long bench with 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:31.280 different cutouts, you know, space not very far apart frankly, um, 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:35.200 and you'd have maybe eight or ten, maybe fifteen. I 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:39.240 saw there was a public restroom in Syria UM that 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:43.520 I think was contemporaneous to to Greece UM that sat 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.800 like eighty and there's no partitions, there's no nothing, And 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.160 it seemed to be um kind of a social endeavor 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:52.400 where like you just sit there and chat with somebody 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.439 while you're pooping. Yeah, it's kind of funny to think 0:08:55.480 --> 0:09:01.080 about how it was this communal social activity, or at 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.480 least it wasn't separated from any of the communal and 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:07.520 social activities, whereas today we have all these unspoken rules 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.800 of of you know, no talking in the bathroom, you 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.120 keep your dirty behavior to yourself. Yeah, I don't know 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:16.160 if you've ever seen it. There's actually if I'm a 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:21.720 Shinama cartoon using them. I think it's the sims where 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.520 it's to illustrate the rules in the men's restroom, and 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:27.960 rule number one is if there's a line of urinals, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:30.880 you take one on either end. It doesn't matter which end, 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.200 just it has to be on the end the next 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.880 person and has to take the one on the furthest end. 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.240 And then as long as there's at least one empty 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:42.160 one separating you and the next person, you can take one. 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.280 But if there isn't, you gotta leave. Like like there's 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.120 it was this crazy series of but it was a 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.160 series of rules where and then the comedy came from 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:51.120 the fact that you're like, this is kind of how 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.720 guys behave in the bathroom. For me, it's the cardinal 0:09:55.840 --> 0:10:00.600 rule is if there's two two stalls, um and the 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:05.079 doors shut on one then both are occupied by by default. 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.360 That must make it difficult here in this office because 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:12.000 the bathrooms go uh floor to ceiling with the doors 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:14.360 and they're shut all the time. So that's that's different 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.400 like that these bathrooms are prime real estate in my opinion. 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.120 But if you remember in the last place where House 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:23.280 the First was headquartered, it was you know, just a 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:25.880 partition and you can see feet and everything. And it's 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.920 that's just to me, like we we really have advanced 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.560 to the point where you know, it is a private 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:38.040 act and um, it's not to be shared. It's not public. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.319 We're not in ancient Greece any longer. Um. And so 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.360 if somebody's in install, you don't sit down next to him. 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:49.239 I just I really feel strongly about that. I can understand. 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.880 And it's interesting because when we get into advanced toilets 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.480 like the Japanese toilets, they take that to the next 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:02.600 level to create another another uh level of privacy for that. Yeah, 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:04.600 it's pretty neat. Like you swipe your hand in front 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.880 of a sensor and it takes you to the seventh dimension, 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.720 completely out of reach of anybody. Here, it's you and 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:17.199 Buckeru Banza and that's it. Yeah, I think he is, 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:21.200 or the tenth. It's one of those. Yeah. So one 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:22.760 of the other things we can talk about before we 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:26.800 move into the earliest flush toilet is that when you're 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:29.480 looking at say Europe in the Middle Ages, all the 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.360 way up into the Renaissance. Uh, you're talking about especially like, 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:39.240 you know, think about castles frequently. I do, I really 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:44.240 do frequently think about castles. Um. Their facilities were pretty primitive. 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:48.800 It was essentially a hole cut into the you know, 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.160 like a like a stone seat sometimes with a wooden 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.000 panel on top of it. Uh. That then had a 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:59.600 channel that that slanted away from the wall, and you're 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:04.280 waste would drop down either into a cesspit, a moat, moat, 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.439 sometimes just the ground. On the invading armies, that is 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:11.720 also a possibility. And these were called garter robes. And 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.880 they were also closets. They weren't just bathrooms, they were closets. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.840 He would hang your clothing. Why because the ammonia from 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:25.120 your urine would kill fleas. Oh wow, that is very 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:30.199 surprisingly clever. It's not scar a break clever, but it's 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.040 up there. So if you're wondering when the first flush 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.520 toilet comes along. It's actually a lot earlier than I 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:39.400 had anticipated. It's weird. I don't know how I never 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:41.719 came across this fact before. And it's one that, by 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.000 the way, a lot of people in our office. No, 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:50.599 it comes from fift nineties six John Harrington. Yes, he 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.880 was a cousin. I think of um Elizabeth the first Yeah, 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.679 he was her godson. Okay, that's what it was. And 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:02.040 he designed this flushing toilet or prototype of a flushing 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.040 toilet for her. Yeah, and she probably didn't use it 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.560 very much. She didn't admit to it. She was a 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:10.640 queen and technically, when you're queen you can pretty much 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.200 poop wherever you like. Someone's going to take care of it. 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.920 But he called it the ajax. No, here's the thing. 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:24.280 John Harrington was a rake. Yeah, he was like, you know, 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.760 kind of like he was known for passing around lewd 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:31.240 poetry to the ladies of the court. He loved too. 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:35.319 He was very clever and he loved being clever and 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:41.040 so lewd poetry. Flushing toilets, well, he called it the 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.480 ajax as a pun. It's a pun on the term 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:50.760 Jake's which is a euphemism for toilet. It's like the John. 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:55.800 It's Jake's, So a Jax is a pun on Jake's. 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:58.480 And it had a pan into which one would do 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:02.280 one's business and assist turn that you could pump water 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.200 up into, and then a handle and when you pulled 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:07.040 the handle, it opened up a valve that allowed the 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:10.520 water from the cistern to come down and wash away 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.319 what was in the pan down through a channel that 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.240 would go out to assess pool onto an invading army 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.240 or onto an invading army, as the case may be. 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:22.280 As far as I know, he only built two. I 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:24.440 think he built one for the queen and one for himself. 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.720 Uh So it was an interesting idea, did not catch 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.800 on at the time. Uh it really just showed his 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.600 inventiveness to to look at the next approach to the 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:40.320 flushing toilet. You have to go ahead by almost two 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:47.840 years Alexander Cummings exactly, and he he invented something that 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.280 ended up being very important for the flushing toilet, the 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.080 s trap. Yeah, so much so that it's still basically 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.120 the design of toilets today. Yeah. Now, this is the 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:01.320 pipes that you see that lead out from your toilet, 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.160 and it's called an S trap because it's in that 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:06.200 S shape, right, yeah, or some people consider it an 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:08.840 upside down you or something like that. It all depends 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:10.920 on one how much of it you can see and 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.840 to exactly what implementation it is. But yeah, the U 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:16.520 trap is another way of looking at an upside on you. 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.760 Uh So the important thing about this was that it 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:25.160 would allow uh it would well trap water once it 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.040 had gone down the pipe from coming back up, and 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:32.040 it would also thus trap the smell, yes, which is 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.760 very important with sewers, because if you're taking a piece 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:40.200 of technology and connecting it to an open sewer, yeah, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:43.400 the smell is gonna be something. Yeah, it's gonna be 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:45.560 how to take care of that? And he did with 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:50.280 the S trap, Yeah, And it was really a brilliant ideas, 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.320 so much so strickling that like three two years later, 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:59.760 two fifty years later, Um, we're still using this guy's designing. 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.560 It is not been improved upon in two d and 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.920 fifty years right there. There are a couple of other 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.760 variations on it, but it has the basic design is 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.640 still what we rely upon because it works, has no 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:18.440 moving parts for just that that pipe, so it can't 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:20.720 break down in that sense I could still get clogged. 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:22.920 Maybe we'll talk a bit about clogs later. Yeah, well, 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.600 you know you gotta talk about it. I didn't. I 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:27.680 did not know we were going to talk about clogs. Well, 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.400 I apologize. If you want, you can check out for 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:32.880 that part of the ill go to my happy place. 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.120 That's good. Yeah, we'll just watch you kind of stare 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:40.560 space um. But it also he also invented a sliding 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:42.920 valve between the bowl and the trap, which allowed some 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:46.840 water to stay in the bowl after you flushed, so 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.800 that it could hold on to the waist for the 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.200 next time. And so you didn't just have just an 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:57.240 empty bowl of waste and then put water into it. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.320 It was you know, it actually improved the warm It's 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:02.440 quite a bit. And you had a lot of other 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:07.080 inventors who followed, like Samuel Prosser, Joseph Brama, Thomas Twyford. 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:09.760 They all made improvements to the basic design of the toilet, 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:13.440 but not a Mr. Crapper. You know, I was gonna 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:15.879 save that. But yeah, let's talk about Thomas Crapper here 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:18.320 for a second. But before we get into that, let's 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.520 take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:27.320 you may have heard the somewhat apocryphal tale that the 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:32.560 toilet was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper. Enough, yeah, 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.800 one of those ha ha, Isn't it ironic? Don't you 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:40.679 think Alanis morrisse at moments? You know it might be. 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:43.000 It's like it's like rain on your wedding day. It's 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:45.480 like Thomas Crapper making a toilet, and I'm pretty sure 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:50.639 that's the way it goes. Um. Thomas Crapper, as far 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.560 as we can tell, was actually a person. There are 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:56.359 records of a Thomas Crapper Whold who held patents in 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.720 the nineteenth century and their plumbing patents, and some of 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.440 them fact involved improvements to the water closet or toilet. 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:08.080 But he didn't invent it um, and he may not 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:12.720 have had that big of an impact overall on the 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.960 toilet evolution. It's just one of those facts that kind 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.280 of got passed around, as you know, or one of 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.600 those those tidbits agains passed around. The total truth. Plus 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:29.520 he pronounced his name, it's crepe Um. Yeah, it was. 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:32.640 It's one of those things where I actually looked into 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:34.720 it too, because I was like, well, I've always heard 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:36.800 that as well. And I'm curious where that came out. Well, 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:39.600 yeah it is. It's got it has traction because it's 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.800 just so delightful. Yeah yeah. Uh. Going back to mid 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.240 eighty eight in the UK, that's when they passed the 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:50.960 Public Health Act, which stated that all new houses in 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:55.040 the UK had to be built with a toilet. Very smart. Yeah, 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:59.720 it's a great way of preserving your your various towns 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:03.679 and ease from becoming overrun with filth. Right. But and 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.479 this is still um in play today. There's a certain 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:14.480 psychology around defecation, urination, expelling waste, right, and it can 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:19.200 swing wildly from era to era. But at that time, 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:23.240 in the mid nineteenth century, forcing the public to install 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:27.760 indoor plumbing wasn't like the public was saying, yes, thank 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:31.520 you government, we've been waiting to have to do this. 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.800 It was more like, um, wait, you want us to 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.960 put a toilet where next to the kitchen? What is 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.880 wrong with you? No, that's disgusting. We want to put 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:44.960 this over in the back garden where you know, chimberpot. 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:47.600 It's mobile that we can put wherever and get rid 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:50.000 of immediately, Like this is gross, Like you want us 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:52.239 to hook it up to the sewer. What's wrong with you? 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.480 So there was like a certain um amount of resistance 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:01.440 to adopting this, whereas now, um, you know, it's yeah, 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:04.919 you want that, you want indoor plumbing, and it's based 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:09.760 on the cultural attitudes towards expelling waste that that vary 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.280 from time to time. Yeah, it's it's it's hard. I mean, 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:14.760 it's very easy for us to start looking at everything 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:17.400 from our current perspective, right, It's very difficult to take 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:19.520 ourselves out of that. But you do have to do 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.000 that when you start talking about subjects like this, because 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:26.280 it was a different world. I mean, people thought differently 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.600 and for for reasons that you can kind of understand 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.880 when you think about it. And you know, if you think, well, 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:37.159 now I've got a thing that dumps waste into a sewer, 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:40.080 but I don't want any of that smell or nastiness 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:42.760 or anything to get into my home. When before I 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.560 had a portable thing, I could actually take it outside 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.200 and dump it in a cess pool or whatever. It 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.320 wasn't there wasn't a big change. Plus plus, it's like 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.320 that's my poop. Yeah it's poop, but it's I know 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.360 where that poop came from. Whereas with the sewer, everybody 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:01.400 else's poop has the opportunity come into your house. Yeah, 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:06.600 which you don't know, you didn't want. Another interesting point 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:12.439 is I've been talking exclusively about people inventors and engineers 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.119 in the UK. Now, when settlers came over to America, 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.360 they did not come over with plans for toilets, and 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:23.320 so the toilet actually had a parallel evolution in the 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.280 UK and in the United States in isolation basically a 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:29.320 little bit, yes, with with a little bit. I mean, 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:33.000 they obviously had some common history there, but it was 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:38.960 largely engineers in the US who created very similar style toilets. 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:41.359 In some cases, they were toilets that were lagging behind 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:45.800 the technology by about twenty years compared to the UK. 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:48.560 But you had folks like James T. Henry and William 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:50.600 Campbell who were awarded a U S patent for a 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:55.080 water closet toilet um. And that's where we really see 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:58.639 it moving forward from that point on and to the 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.760 point where the essentially merged like the the You know 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:05.119 that we saw the United States adopt things like the 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:09.879 s trap, making the toilets more useful. Do you know 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:14.320 when toilet paper was invented. Toilet paper was invented in 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:23.000 ninety eight. I predate ninety and I distinctly remember toilet paper. 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:29.560 You were off by almost a hundred years when toilet 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:31.639 paper was invented, didn't They used to use a series 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:38.480 robot catalog corn Cob. There's actually some poetry that I've 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:42.159 read where there's a discussion a giant. I forget what 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:45.440 poem it is, but there's a giant talking about all 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.879 the different things he has used to clean himself after 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:55.359 after evacuation, including I think he determined that the most 0:22:55.359 --> 0:23:00.560 comfortable was the neck of a goose. Yeah, I can 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:04.600 tell you not not for the goose, but yeah, uh so. Yeah. 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:07.480 The toilet paper was in but not marketed heavily until 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:11.000 nineteen two, so for more than a decade. Yeah, it 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:13.200 just kind of I was like, well, I mean, why 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.560 we got the series robot catalog Cobs? How do you 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:20.400 look around your house and say, oh, yeah, corn Cobs, 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:23.879 that's that's a good idea idea. Yeah, sure it's got traction, 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:28.439 but pay a price for that track. Yeah, I I 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:33.400 hesitate to hazard a guess. To be honest, I go idea, 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:37.520 I'll try to have some geese at home. All right, okay, well, 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:44.000 i'd like to apologize on behalf of Josh's I'd like 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:46.879 to send to you my apologies for giving him the idea. 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:50.880 Let's talk about how a toilet actually works. Okay, alright, 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:53.480 So you got your basic parts of the toilet. You've 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:57.040 got the tank, You've got the bowl in which you 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:00.560 do your business, and then you have the lifen the 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:04.560 s trap area that where the waist goes once you flush, 0:24:04.640 --> 0:24:07.840 which is technically part of the bowl. Yeah. Yeah, it's 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:10.280 just it's easier to talk about it as separate parts. 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:14.040 But yes, you aren't correct. So inside the tank you 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:18.080 have the flush valve. This is the valve that allows 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:20.879 water to flow out of the tank and into the bowl. Yes. 0:24:20.960 --> 0:24:23.720 So when you press down the handle, yeah, there's that 0:24:23.840 --> 0:24:27.040 handle is connected by chain to that flush valve. That's 0:24:27.040 --> 0:24:29.000 the thing that lifts up and lets the water from 0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:31.440 the tank into the bowl. Yeah. And once the water 0:24:31.560 --> 0:24:34.320 is flowing down, like for most toilets, you no longer 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:38.120 have to hold the handle down because just the water itself. 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:40.440