Video: Why Elizabeth I didn't like the first flush toilet, although the instructions amused
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Up to eight or ten years it often seems that things that make life easier have always existed. After ten, something clicks in your head, and almost everything that you use in everyday life every day - if it is more complicated than a saucepan - you think that it was invented recently. More often than not, both are misconceptions. Take, for example, a flush toilet.
As you know, the water closet became very popular in Europe after the International Exhibition in London in 1851. There, thousands of visitors were able to personally experience the convenience of a device with a flush, and after that many did not want to return to the old ways to recover. But the British had no idea that the "novelty" that enthralled them had been for several centuries - except that it had been modified for the exhibition to become even more convenient and hygienic.
The first flush toilet was invented by their compatriot Sir John Harrington (aristocrat!) At the end of the sixteenth century. He gave his invention, like a warship, a name: Ajax (a mighty warrior from Homer's poem about the siege of Troy). Mainly because of the sound that he made during the flush: it was very similar to the battle roar of some giant.
There was one more inconvenience when using it. Sewerage at that time in England was not as a phenomenon. That is, the toilet pipe had to be led inside the estate or the castle for a very long time until it reaches the cesspool or ditch. At the same time, having received a portion of water with sewage at high speed, the already existing sewage made a big "splash", so that every passer-by involuntarily noticed that someone had just used the device. It was difficult and constant to replenish the water supply. England was also not supplied with water.
Nevertheless, Sir Harrington found his device very successful and tried to implement it in the surest way. At that time, there were two ways for everyone to start using something. Either the ruling monarch had to introduce this thing into his life, and then everyone imitated him - or the first beauty of the court, and then everyone imitated her. At the end of the sixteenth century, both were considered Queen Elizabeth I, so Harrington took the trouble to solemnly present the device to her personally and secured permission to install a toilet in her bedroom.
He also provided instructions for the device. For the sake of grace - in order, so to speak, to refine the theme of the gift - he wrote it in the form of a satirical political poem. Moreover, Sir Harrington knew how Elizabeth loved well-aimed satire and poetry. And, by the way, observe hygiene in general. He guessed right: the instruction made the queen very happy. By the way, the poem even had a title: "Metamorphoses of Ajax".
However, it was not possible to introduce the toilet in this way. The fact is that Harrington could not lead the flush pipe outside the royal palace, it would be very difficult - so he made it so that the sewage accumulated in the tank installed below the bedroom. It was supposed to be devastated from time to time. However, the toilet bowl invented by him did not have a curved pipe that traps odors, and as a result, the miasma from the tank rose directly into the royal bedroom. She smelled in the most terrible way very quickly, and the queen in anger sent Ajax back to its creator. History is silent whether the same tank with sewage was attached to the package.
I must say that if you do not limit yourself to the framework of the history of European civilization, then the first toilet with a flush was invented and used in ancient China about two thousand years ago. It was used, of course, by a representative of the ruling dynasty. The flushing was carried out simply from the water tap (yes, at that time the water supply was already known, and not only so far in the east - the great civilizations of the Bronze Age, for example, the Minoan in Crete, knew it). But, of course, flushing like this was longer and more inconvenient than with a cistern, so this device could not be called a flush toilet - rather, it was a washable toilet.
Despite the fact that England is the birthplace of the modern toilet, Englishwomen could not use them for a very long time: How the ladies of Victorian England secured access to public toilets.
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