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The origin of the Russian word "toilet"
There are two versions of the origin of the Russian word "toilet":
Story
For the next hundred and fifty years, toilet design stagnated until the valve-flush toilet was invented in 1738.
Somewhat later, the London watchmaker Alexander Cummings developed a water lock (Eng. water closet), which solved the problem of unpleasant odors, and in 1775 received a patent for this device.
In 1777, Joseph Praser designed a cistern with a valve and handle.
There are toilet bowls with a separate cistern, with a cistern mounted on a shelf (the so-called compact), and monolithic. Separate tanks require installation between the tank and the bowl of the connecting pipe. Earlier designs of toilet bowls involved the installation of a tank at a height of about 2 m to form a flow of water of a sufficiently high speed. Subsequently, this design was replaced by compact toilets, which are easier to install and maintain. There are also toilets that involve a hidden installation of the tank.
Bowl
The toilet bowl during the production process is cast in such a way that the visible open part of the bowl smoothly passes into the siphon located in the depth of the bowl (provides a water, that is, a hydraulic seal for gases formed and accumulated in the sewer system), which then smoothly passes into the "outlet" (actually outlet pipe).
Structurally, in the direction of release, toilet bowls are divided into two main groups - with a "horizontal" release and with a "vertical" release:
Toilets with "horizontal" release- the outlet of such a toilet bowl is usually located at the rear of the bowl and directed backwards. The outlet pipe itself protrudes noticeably from the body of the toilet bowl, and the axis of the outlet is parallel or at a slight angle downwards to the plane of the floor (or ceiling).
Such toilet bowls are distributed primarily in Europe, including Russia and the CIS. Historically, this is due to the fact that the laying of sewer pipes here was carried out, as a rule, along the ceiling, usually along the walls (or partitions). And toilets with a horizontal outlet are installed in the same way, as a rule, against the wall, at right angles to it.
The outlet of such a toilet bowl is connected to the sewer pipe, usually with a special cuff. These toilet bowls are attached to the floor (ceiling) through special holes in the bowl leg using screws with dowels or anchors. To install a toilet of the second type with a downward outlet in the case when the sewer pipes are located on top of the floor, the floor level under the toilet would have to be raised at least 15 ... and adjacent rooms (differently high floors are obtained).
Toilets with "vertical" release have a built-in downward outlet, hidden, like the siphon, in the main body of the toilet bowl. Such toilets are common in the United States and a number of other American countries. Here, from time immemorial, the laying of sewer pipe beds was carried out under the ceiling, not tied to walls and partitions (together with the wiring of ventilation and other engineering systems). Then these engineering communications were covered with a hemmed or suspended ceiling, as at the present time.
The toilet bowl of the 2nd type with a downward outlet in this case can be installed at any angle to the walls anywhere in the room, even in the middle of the room. To do this, a special standard screw flange with a lock is mounted in the floor (the toilet bowl is equipped with a corresponding standard counterpart) and with a round hole in the middle, into which the end of the sewer pipe is inserted.
The toilet bowl is mounted by mounting it on a flange, followed by turning it at a small angle until it is fixed. At the same time, since the outlet pipe "looks" down, when installing the toilet bowl, it is pressed against the end of the sewer pipe through a special sealing ring. The design of the screw flange connection allows you to dismantle and change the toilet in a matter of minutes. The junction of the toilet bowl with the floor after its installation is not visible, therefore, such a toilet bowl looks aesthetically pleasing from the rear, that is, from the side of the tank, which makes it possible to install it indoors in an arbitrary way.
flush tank
The tank is designed to supply the portion of water necessary for cleaning the toilet bowl. The cisterns of compact toilets are usually made of ceramic, while free-standing cisterns can be made of plastic, cast iron, stainless steel, and other materials.
A filling mechanism and a descent mechanism are mounted in the tank. To fill the toilet, a float valve is used, which closes when the required water level is reached. The branch pipe for connecting to the water supply can be located both on the side surface (a tank with a side water supply) and in the lower part of the tank (with a bottom connection).
The descent mechanism is of two types: siphon and using a pear. Siphon descent was used in tanks of high installation - in it, when descending after releasing the drain lever, water continues to flow due to the siphon effect. This design is quite noisy.
For low-lying cisterns, a rubber pear is used in the release mechanism, which pops up when the drain is activated and returns to its place, blocking the drain hole, only after the tank is empty. To protect against overflow, an additional branch pipe is required, which can be either combined with a pear or made as a separate unit. Also, dual-mode drain mechanisms are becoming widespread, which allow you to drain both the entire volume of water in the tank, and a certain part of it.
Toilet seat
Historically, the first seats and covers were varnished wood. Currently, plastic structures are more common - they are more hygienic. Seats and covers differ in the quality of the plastic and the design of the fasteners. In most cases, several toilet seats can be selected for the same toilet model: the so-called soft, semi-rigid and hard. Fasteners of the toilet seat to the bowl can be metal or plastic, of various designs.
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An excerpt characterizing the toilet bowl
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose word it seemed that the event took place or not took place, were as little arbitrary as the action of every soldier who went on a campaign by lot or by recruitment. It could not be otherwise, because in order for the will of Napoleon and Alexander (those people on whom the event seemed to depend) to be fulfilled, the coincidence of innumerable circumstances was necessary, without one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that the millions of people in whose hands was real power, the soldiers who fired, carried provisions and guns, it was necessary that they agreed to fulfill this will of individual and weak people and were led to this by countless complex, diverse reasons.Fatalism in history is inevitable for explaining unreasonable phenomena (that is, those whose rationality we do not understand). The more we try to rationally explain these phenomena in history, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible they become for us.
Each person lives for himself, enjoys freedom to achieve his personal goals and feels with his whole being that he can now do or not do such and such an action; but as soon as he does it, so this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irrevocable and becomes the property of history, in which it has not a free, but a predetermined significance.
There are two aspects of life in every person: personal life, which is all the more free, the more abstract its interests, and spontaneous, swarm life, where a person inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed to him.
A person consciously lives for himself, but serves as an unconscious tool for achieving historical, universal goals. A perfect deed is irrevocable, and its action, coinciding in time with millions of actions of other people, acquires historical significance. The higher a person stands on the social ladder, the more he is connected with great people, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious the predestination and inevitability of his every act.
"The heart of the king is in the hand of God."
The king is a slave of history.
History, that is, the unconscious, general, swarming life of mankind, uses every minute of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
Napoleon, despite the fact that more than ever, now, in 1812, it seemed to him that it depended on him verser or not verser le sang de ses peuples [to shed or not to shed the blood of his peoples] (as in the last letter he wrote to him Alexander), was never more than now subject to those inevitable laws that compelled him (acting in relation to himself, as it seemed to him, according to his own arbitrariness) to do for the common cause, for the sake of history, what had to be done.
The people of the West moved to the East in order to kill each other. And according to the law of the coincidence of causes, thousands of petty reasons for this movement and for the war coincided with this event: reproaches for non-observance of the continental system, and the Duke of Oldenburg, and the movement of troops to Prussia, undertaken (as it seemed to Napoleon) only to to achieve an armed peace, and the love and habit of the French emperor for war, which coincided with the disposition of his people, the fascination with the grandiosity of preparations, and the costs of preparation, and the need to acquire such benefits that would pay for these costs, and stupefied honors in Dresden, and diplomatic negotiations, which, in the opinion of contemporaries, were led with a sincere desire to achieve peace and which only hurt the pride of one side and the other, and millions and millions of other reasons that were faked as an event that was about to happen, coincided with it.
When an apple is ripe and falls, why does it fall? Is it because it gravitates towards the earth, because the rod dries up, because it dries up in the sun, because it becomes heavier, because the wind shakes it, because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the reason. All this is only a coincidence of the conditions under which every vital, organic, spontaneous event takes place. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls down because the cellulose decomposes and the like will be just as right and just as wrong as that child standing below who says that the apple fell down because he wanted to eat. him and that he prayed for it. Just as right and wrong will be the one who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted it, and because he died because Alexander wanted him to die: how right and wrong will he who says that he collapsed into a million pounds the dug-out mountain fell because the last worker struck under it for the last time with a pick. In historical events, the so-called great men are labels that give names to the event, which, like labels, have the least connection with the event itself.
Each of their actions, which seem to them arbitrary for themselves, is in the historical sense involuntary, but is in connection with the entire course of history and is determined eternally.
On May 29, Napoleon left Dresden, where he stayed for three weeks, surrounded by a court made up of princes, dukes, kings, and even one emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon treated the princes, kings and the emperor who deserved it, scolded the kings and princes with whom he was not completely satisfied, presented his own, that is, pearls and diamonds taken from other kings, to the Empress of Austria and, tenderly embracing the Empress Marie Louise, as his historian says, he left her with a bitter separation, which she - this Marie Louise, who was considered his wife, despite the fact that another wife remained in Paris - seemed unable to endure. Despite the fact that diplomats still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and worked diligently towards this goal, despite the fact that Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to Emperor Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere [Sovereign brother] and sincerely assuring that he did not want war and that he would always love and respect him - he rode to the army and gave new orders at each station, aimed at hastening the movement of the army from west to east. He rode in a road carriage drawn by a six, surrounded by pages, adjutants and an escort, along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig and Koenigsberg. In each of these cities, thousands of people greeted him with awe and delight.
The army moved from west to east, and variable gears carried him there. On June 10, he caught up with the army and spent the night in the Vilkovis forest, in an apartment prepared for him, on the estate of a Polish count.
The next day, Napoleon, having overtaken the army, drove up to the Neman in a carriage and, in order to inspect the area of the crossing, changed into a Polish uniform and drove ashore.
Seeing on the other side the Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the spreading steppes (les Steppes), in the middle of which was Moscou la ville sainte, [Moscow, the holy city,] the capital of that, similar to the Scythian, state, where Alexander the Great went, - Napoleon, unexpectedly for everyone and contrary to both strategic and diplomatic considerations, ordered an offensive, and the next day his troops began to cross the Neman.
On the 12th, early in the morning, he left the tent that had been pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Neman, and looked through the telescope at the streams of his troops emerging from the Vilkovis forest, spilling over three bridges built on the Neman. The troops knew about the presence of the emperor, looked for him with their eyes, and when they found a figure in a frock coat and hat separated from the retinue on the mountain in front of the tent, they threw their hats up, shouted: “Vive l" Empereur! [Long live the emperor!] - and alone for others, without being exhausted, flowed out, all flowed out of the huge forest that had hidden them hitherto, and, upset, crossed over three bridges to the other side.
- On fera du chemin cette fois ci. Oh! quand il s "en mele lui meme ca chauffe… Nom de Dieu… Le voila!.. Vive l" Empereur! Les voila donc les Steppes de l "Asie! Vilain pays tout de meme. Au revoir, Beauche; je te reserve le plus beau palais de Moscou. Au revoir! Bonne chance… L" as tu vu, l "Empereur? Vive l" Empereur!.. preur! Si on me fait gouverneur aux Indes, Gerard, je te fais ministre du Cachemire, c "est arrete. Vive l" Empereur! Vive! vive! vive! Les gredins de Cosaques, comme ils filent. Vive l "Empereur! Le voila! Le vois tu? Je l" ai vu deux fois comme jete vois. Le petit caporal ... Je l "ai vu donner la croix al" un des vieux ... Vive l "Empereur! here they are, Asian steppes... But a bad country. Goodbye, Boche. I'll leave you the best palace in Moscow. Goodbye, I wish you success. Have you seen the emperor? Hooray! If they make me governor in India, I will make you minister of Kashmir... Hooray! Emperor here he is! See him? I saw him twice as you. Little corporal... I saw how he hung a cross on one of the old men... Hurrah, emperor!] - said the voices of old and young people, of the most diverse characters and positions in society. all the faces of these people had one common expression of joy at the start of the long-awaited campaign and delight and devotion to the man in the gray frock coat standing on the mountain.
On June 13, Napoleon was given a small thoroughbred Arabian horse, and he sat down and galloped to one of the bridges across the Neman, constantly deafened by enthusiastic cries, which he obviously endured only because it was impossible to forbid them to express their love for him with these cries; but these cries, accompanying him everywhere, weighed him down and distracted him from the military care that had seized him from the time he joined the army. He crossed one of the bridges that swayed on boats to the other side, turned sharply to the left and galloped towards Kovno, preceded by the enthusiastic guards chasseurs, who were dying with happiness, clearing the way for the troops galloping ahead of him. Having approached the wide river Viliya, he stopped near the Polish uhlan regiment, which stood on the shore.
- Vivat! - the Poles shouted enthusiastically, upsetting the front and crushing each other in order to see him. Napoleon examined the river, got off his horse and sat down on a log lying on the bank. At a wordless sign, they gave him a trumpet, he put it on the back of a happy page that ran up and began to look at the other side. Then he went deeper into examining the sheet of the map spread out between the logs. Without raising his head, he said something, and two of his adjutants galloped to the Polish uhlans.
- What? What did he say? - was heard in the ranks of the Polish lancers, when one adjutant galloped up to them.
It was ordered, having found a ford, to go to the other side. A Polish lancer colonel, a handsome old man, flushed and confused in words with excitement, asked the adjutant if he would be allowed to swim across the river with his lancers without finding a ford. He, with obvious fear of rejection, like a boy who asks permission to mount a horse, asked to be allowed to swim across the river in the eyes of the emperor. The adjutant said that, probably, the emperor would not be dissatisfied with this excessive zeal.
As soon as the adjutant said this, an old mustachioed officer with a happy face and sparkling eyes, raising his saber, shouted: “Vivat! - and, having commanded the lancers to follow him, he gave the spurs to the horse and galloped to the river. He viciously pushed the horse that hesitated under him and thumped into the water, heading deeper into the rapids of the current. Hundreds of lancers galloped after him. It was cold and eerie in the middle and in the rapids of the current. Lancers clung to each other, fell off their horses, some horses drowned, people drowned, the rest tried to swim, some on the saddle, some holding on to the mane. They tried to swim forward to the other side and, despite the fact that there was a crossing half a verst away, they were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this river under the gaze of a man sitting on a log and not even looking at what they were doing. When the returning adjutant, having chosen a convenient moment, allowed himself to draw the Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, a little man in a gray frock coat got up and, calling Berthier to him, began to walk up and down the shore with him, giving him orders and occasionally looking with displeasure on the drowning lancers that entertained his attention.
For him, the conviction was not new that his presence at all ends of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy, equally amazes and plunges people into the madness of self-forgetfulness. He ordered a horse to be brought to him and rode to his camp.
About forty lancers drowned in the river, despite the boats sent to help. Most washed back to this shore. The colonel and several men swam across the river and with difficulty climbed to the other side. But as soon as they got out in a wet dress that had slapped on them, flowing in streams, they shouted: “Vivat!”, Enthusiastically looking at the place where Napoleon stood, but where he was no longer there, and at that moment considered themselves happy.
We get so used to everyday things that we rarely think about what they were before, what they could be in the future, and how we would live without them at all. One such thing taken for granted is the faience flush toilet. We already have a variety of models available for installation in an apartment, and today we offer to travel through the centuries and trace the development of the toilet bowl from the most ancient models to modern engineering masterpieces.
Ancient world
The first flush toilets are believed to have appeared in the Indus civilization in the third millennium BC. They were connected to a complex sewerage system and in developed cities were in almost every home. From the second millennium, the Minoan civilization that developed in Crete also began to use them.
The Roman Empire
In the centuries of prosperity of the Roman Empire, toilets were quite popular. Like the baths, they were public and joined the sewers, through which water was periodically drained. Unfortunately, with the decline of the empire, the culture of hygiene also declined, and until the end of the Middle Ages, the issue of arranging latrines was of little concern to anyone.
Ancient Roman toilet. Photo: Fr Lawrence Lew
Invention of the flush toilet
Sir John is credited with the invention of the toilet. Harington. It is believed that it was he who created a toilet for Catherine I, equipped with a tank with a valve for draining water.
In any case, the industrial revolution could not but affect the development of technology, and the growth of cities - the development of sewage, and gradually toilets began to spread and acquire a modern look. This became possible thanks to the invention by Alexander Cumming of a hydraulic seal - a U-shaped bend of pipes that prevents the penetration of malodorous and dangerous sewer gases into the room.
In 1755, the shutter was patented, and inventor Joseph Bramah opened the first workshop for the production of flush toilets,starting to install them in London, and at the same time improving the design so that freezing water in winter does not interfere with the operation of mechanisms.
Joseph Brahm's first flush toilet and Alexander Cummingon's hydraulic seal
English toilets
Only in the 19th century did toilet bowls become a common and common item. George Jennings opened a manufactory for their production in the 1840s. The most famous manufacturer of toilets (and the holder of several patents for their improvements) was Thomas Crapper. But the ceramic toilet bowl, which is a unity of a tank and a bowl (from the word unitas - “unity” - the name of this item came from), was invented by Thomas Twyford.
Worldwide distribution
Gradually, toilets began to spread across continental Europe. One of the first was installed in 1860 in the palace of Queen Victoria.
Toilets with cistern raised to the ceiling appeared in the United States. In 1906, William Sloan invented the flushing system, which no longer worked by gravity, but by supplying pressurized water. A year later, a vortex flush system was invented, in which water flowed down the bowl like a funnel, effectively washing away impurities from it. Toilet bowls were improved, acquiring the mechanisms and features familiar to us. In 1980, Bruce Thompson invented the double-tank cistern to conserve water, and Philip Haas invented the rim-flush toilet.
One of the inventions of Philip Haas
Modern design
Today, the design of the toilets themselves, flush systems and pipelines continue to improve, and it is obvious that the models familiar to all of us with a tank attached to the bowl are gradually giving way to more technically advanced and stylish designs. They are developed by both new companies and veterans - for example, the German company TECE, founded back in 1955. It was organized from a design bureau, so the typical engineering culture of asking questions has been preserved in it so far: when working on projects, specialists strive to improve each one to make the mechanism work faster and more efficiently and look as attractive as possible.
Modern toilets, like the rest of the technology, tend to become built-in, and TECE is working in this direction: the company develops wall modules made of high-strength steel, protected by a zinc layer and powder-coated. Flushing cisterns are made of the durable and strong plastic capable to work properly under loading the calculated service life. Of course, a hidden structure is more difficult to install and repair, so you need to pay attention to the warranty period, which TECE has the longest on the market - up to 10 years.
Along with the technical improvement of hidden structures, modern companies are also paying attention to the few remaining structural elements, in particular, flush keys. TECE is also market leader in this respect: no manufacturer offers such a variety of colors, textures and materials from which the panels are made. The range of TECE flush systems will satisfy the taste of the most demanding customer: from classic flush-mounted pushbuttons to rotary knobs to electronic panels for hygienic, contactless flushing.
Multifunctional systems and integrated solutions are another important modern trend that extends to toilet structures. Thus, the TECElux multifunctional toilet terminal includes an air purification system, touch-sensitive flush keys, a dual flush system and height adjustment.
Finally, it is still possible to improve small details and invent micro-solutions that, despite their external insignificance, can significantly improve the quality of life. For example, the problem of splashing when flushing can be solved by installing restrictive rings to control the speed of water movement. Simple and elegant, isn't it?
As we can see, technology does not stand still, and thanks to generations of engineers, toilet bowls continue to improve, changing to suit our ideas of beauty and the requirements of maximum hygiene. Therefore, if you are going to make repairs, pay attention to the developments of the industry flagships and choose a modern system that adapts to your personal needs, and not a design from the last century, no matter how familiar and deceptively reliable it may seem.
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Civilization begins with sewers. The history of the toilet and its "ancestors" is rooted in antiquity.
According to most historians and architects, the first prototype of the toilet appeared around 3000 BC. in Mesopotamia. Slightly younger than them, those found during excavations in Mohenjo-Daro (on the banks of the Indus River) were a more complex sewer system: sewage from latrines made near the outer walls of houses flowed into street ditches, along which they left the city. The latrine was a brick box with a wooden seat. The storerooms of the British Museum keep the find no less valuable and ancient. The carved throne-stool of the Sumerian queen Shubad from the tomb in Ur dates back to 2600 BC.
As for the ancient Egyptians, their toilets, which we know mainly from excavations at Tell el-Amarna (14th century BC), the city of Pharaoh Akhenaten, were not connected to the sewer. In rich houses, a lavatory whitened with lime was arranged behind the bathroom. It contained a limestone slab placed on top of a brick box filled with sand, which had to be cleaned out periodically. In one of the ancient Egyptian burials in Thebes, dating back to the same century as the city of the famous pharaoh, a portable wooden toilet was found, under which an earthenware pot was placed.
Archaeologists working in the province of Henan excavating the tomb of one of the rulers of the Western Han Dynasty, which ruled China from 206 BC. to 24 BC, found a toilet. With a stone seat, comfortable armrests and running water connected to it.
And, of course, in toilet history you can not get around the Eternal City - the main metropolis of antiquity - Rome. One of its oldest engineering structures is Cloaca Maxima (from Latin Cluo - to clean). It was originally an open canal built in the 6th century BC. and served both to drain marshy soil and to drain sewage. On it, all the contents descended into the Tiber River. A branch of the cloaca approached each of the toilets, and then returned to the main highway. A seat with a hole was placed directly above the duct, so the flowing water was constantly washing away waste products. For many centuries, Cloaca Maxima has been the most advanced sewer system in the world. By the 1st century AD, the population of the city had already reached a million, and therefore the cloaca had to be expanded in places up to 7 meters; workers who monitored her condition floated on it in a boat.
It is interesting that, like bath procedures, going to the toilet for a Roman was a public event. The seats stood in a circle and were not separated by partitions. Therefore, a cheerful murmur was constantly interspersed with talk about the fate of the empire, and Roman businessmen dragged important clients not to the bathhouse, as they are now, but to the toilet. Heated seats were also an important achievement of the Romans. The solution was simple - the seat was heated by robes attached to the restroom. In turn, changing from one seat to another, the slave maintained the desired temperature with the warmth of his soft spot.
In the Middle Ages, Europeans used to throw the contents of a chamber pot right out of the window. The authorities of London found an original way out: they began to hire people who were supposed to walk the streets and, noticing how someone leaned out with a pot, shouting: “Watch out!”
The streets were buried in mud and shit so much that there was no way to go through them in the mud. It was then, according to the chronicles that have come down to us, that stilts appeared in many German cities, the “spring shoes” of a city dweller, without which it was simply impossible to move around the streets. The German fashion for stilts, with the help of which it was only possible to move through filthy streets, spread so widely that in France and Belgium in the Middle Ages there were even competitions on stilts between two camps into which the inhabitants were divided. 
In Paris, in 1270, a law was issued, under the threat of a fine, forbidding "pouring slop and sewage from the upper windows of houses." The famous inventor Leonardo da Vinci, invited to the court of King Francis 1, was so shocked by the stench of Paris that he designed a flush toilet specifically for his patron. In the drawings of the great seer, water supply pipes, sewer outlets, and ventilation shafts are indicated. And although, as in the case of a helicopter and a submarine, Leonardo was centuries ahead of his time, the drawings of his toilet were never put into practice. removable tank from the inside. Furniture makers were sophisticated, veiling stools under chairs, banquettes, desks and even bookshelves! The whole building was usually richly decorated with wooden carvings, fabric drapery, and gilding.
The next time Sir John Harrington thought about the civilized removal of sewage. In 1596, he built an original "night vase" for the English Queen Elizabeth, which did not need to be taken out and cleaned regularly. She washed herself on the spot, with water from a tank connected from above. Actually, this is where the history of the flush system came from. Unlike running water, where water flows constantly, flushing saves water - which in the palace of the Queen of England had to be raised to the chambers with buckets. True, in addition to the water supply, there was no sewerage in the palace either - so Harrington had to attach a special container from below under his toilet bowl. These problems delayed the development of toilet technology for another 200 years.
Another invention of enlightened European aristocrats was "potty tricks". So, the French king Louis 14 (1638-1715) considered it impolite to interrupt the conversation because of such a trifle as the desire to go to the toilet. The monarch would sit on a chair with a hole in the middle and a pot underneath. This "toilet" was made of expensive porcelain, trimmed with precious stones, with gilding and exquisite patterns. Catherine de Medici conducted receptions in a similar way. And when her husband died, she changed the color of the velvet that fitted the toilet seat to black, apparently so that everyone could appreciate the extent of her grief.
Ordinary aristocrats at that time also did not disdain to use the pot in front of all honest people.
Right at the balls, the servant brought the needy gentleman or lady a pot, which they immediately used for its intended purpose.
But if the men managed the pots without any problems, then the ladies in magnificent dresses had to endure some inconvenience. Therefore, in the 16th century, they invented burdala - elongated pots, or vases, which were easy to hide under numerous skirts.
In 1775, London watchmaker Alexander Cumming created the first flush toilet. Three years later, another inventor, Joseph Bramah, came up with a cast-iron toilet and a hinged lid. This toilet has already been a success. Also toilet bowls were made of enameled steel. One such can be seen in the Hofburg, the Viennese seat of the Habsburgs. Soon, faience toilet bowls appeared - it was more convenient to wash it. In 1830, Asian cholera, which spread along with water spoiled by sewage, took the lives of many Europeans. Another scourge was typhoid fever. At this point, the governments became thoughtful and decided to fork out for sewerage, and with it for comfortable toilets. Thomas Krepper, who gave the world the “pull the chain” system, became most famous in the toilet industry. It was he who used a curved drain pipe with a water seal, which protected the toilet room from direct contact with the sewer system.
Well, the mass production of toilet bowls began in 1909 in Spain. This noble cause was taken up by a company called Unitas, which means union and unification. At first they were called hygienic pottery. Over time, the too long name was replaced with a short "toilet" - according to the name of the manufacturer's company. Many good minds have worked on the simple, ordinary-looking toilet that we use today.
The design of this device has literally royal roots. For the first time, a toilet seat with a bowl and a water flush was demonstrated in 1596 to the English Queen Elizabeth by her godson John Harrington. According to legend, the queen was very clean and highly appreciated the device, ordering the installation of the same in Richmond Castle and Westminster. However, the nobility considered this extremely indecent, and the coming to power of the pious James I put an end to the ideas of water closetization of England. Harrington's invention was forgotten for almost two centuries in favor of chamber pots, which in those days in cities were customary to empty directly onto the streets (through windows).
In the XVII-XVIII centuries. /bm9icg===>For example, waves of cholera rolled over the densely populated cities of Europe one after another, claiming tens of thousands of lives. The cause of the disease was considered "poisonous miasma", and only at the end of the 18th century, doctors began to guess that the poor condition of the sewage system was directly related to epidemics. After the epidemic of 1848, which claimed the lives of 14,000 Londoners and more than 55,000 residents of the country, the British government, concerned about public hygiene issues, passed a series of laws and allocated money for a major modernization of the London sewer system, which, in particular, provided for the mandatory presence of water closets in city houses.
Inventive thought did not doze all this time. The first revolution was made by the Scottish mechanic and watchmaker Alexander Cummings - in 1775 he received a British patent for a drain valve and an S-shaped pipe (water lock), which prevented the penetration of smell into the room. Three years later, the system was improved by the mechanic Joseph Brama (the future inventor of the hydraulic press) - he proposed a flap valve, and also developed a float system for the tank.
The reign of Queen Victoria was a golden age for British plumbing. In 1852, George Jennings designed a bowl with a valve that opened only during flushing under the weight of water, and the rest of the time it reliably blocked the drain hole. In the 1870s, plumber and entrepreneur Thomas Krepper suggested raising the cistern to the ceiling to increase water pressure, and stretching a chain with a handle to the lever. He also completely abandoned mechanical valves and dampers in favor of a water seal, and for the first time widely used a siphon system instead of constantly leaking float valves. The final touch was made in 1883 by Thomas Twyford, who presented his masterpiece - a single design of a bowl and a water seal not from metal, but from much more aesthetic and hygienic faience. The unit, called Unitas (Latin for “Unity”), was equipped with a Krepper-designed top tank, as well as a lifting wooden seat. This masterpiece became the real star of the 1884 International Health Exhibition in London. It was this model that determined the appearance of the modern toilet bowl and, according to one version, gave it a name (there is another version - the toilet bowl allegedly got its name from the name of the Spanish company Unitas, which supplied water closets to Russia).
The history of the creation of the toiletFor the first time, mass production of faience toilet bowls began in Spain in 1909. At the beginning of the last century, a joint-stock company was organized there for the electrification of the country, which was called Unitas ("unity", "union"). By order of this society, one of the factories near Barcelona began to produce faience insulators, and at the same time cast toilet bowls. And on all products they put the brand of the UNITAZ joint-stock company. From this stamp, the name of the hygienic product went around the world.
A world without toilets
Fenced pits with petrified feces are found by archaeologists at almost all Neolithic sites. During archaeological excavations in the Orkney Islands, which are located off the coast of Scotland, archaeologists have found depressions in the stone walls of houses that connected to gutters. The finds turned out to be latrines. The age of these toilets is about 5000 years. Today they are considered the most ancient. A little younger than them are those found during excavations in Mohenjo-Daro (on the banks of the Indus River) and were already a more extensive and complex sewer system: feces from latrines that were made near the outer walls of houses flowed into street ditches, along which they left outside the city. The latrine looked like a brick box with a wooden seat. Chinese archaeologists in the province of Hunan (Hongji region) found a toilet bowl of the monarch of the Western Han Dynasty. This rarity is over 2000 years old. It was created around 50-100 BC. The flushing of the waste products of the human body was carried out with the help of water from the water pipe, which the Chinese also invented before the Europeans. In the storerooms of the British Museum there is a carved throne-stool of the Sumerian queen Shubad, which was found in Ur and dates back to 2600 BC. And this design - "an armchair with a hole above the pot" lasted for millennia and only at the beginning of the 20th century was replaced by a water closet. 
But the history of the water closet is also quite "gray-haired". Already in the XX century BC. the palace buildings of the settlement of Knossos on the island of Crete were equipped with latrines that were connected to the sewerage system. In ancient Egypt, toilets were not connected to sewers, which, however, were already well developed. In wealthy houses, a lavatory whitened with lime was arranged behind the bathroom. there was a limestone slab laid on top of a brick box filled with sand, which had to be replaced periodically. In Thebes, in one of the ancient Egyptian burials, which dates back to the same century as the city of the famous pharaoh, a portable toilet made of wood was found, under which an earthen pot was placed. The Greeks used simple pots, which are mentioned in ancient plays as weapons in domestic scandals - the last resort to break an opponent was to put a full pot in the middle of the table. In Mesopotamia in the III millennium BC. there were already toilets that connected to drains, through which human waste flowed, gathering in brick sewer wells. In wealthy houses, the seats were laid out of brick
Toilet facilities of ancient Rome
In ancient Rome, public toilets appeared for the first time on the street and at the baths, they were finished with marble and ceramic slabs, and sometimes even decorated with paintings. The sewage went into the drains under the seats, from which they were washed out by running water and carried away through the pipe system to special collectors - cesspools. The famous Roman drain сloaka MAXIMA, built in the 7th-6th century BC. e. the ruler of the Etruscans, Tarquinus Sperbus, was about five meters wide and stretched between the Capitoline and Palatine hills from the main city forum to the Tiber. The custodian of all this splendor was the goddess Cloacina. Cloaka MAXIMA remained the most advanced sewage system for many centuries after its construction, and it still exists. The history of the sewers of Ancient Rome stores information about luxurious latrines (freaks), which served as a meeting place and conversations under the murmur of drain streams. And judging by the way the seats were located here, then visiting these establishments was one of the forms of leisure of the townspeople and the administration of needs was interspersed with a conversation with people who were pleasant to the heart. The stone seats formed a circle - like in an amphitheatre. There was enough space for almost 20 people. Visiting such freaks was affordable only for very wealthy citizens.
Middle Ages
When the Roman Empire fell, much was lost, including the principles of urban sanitation. The sewerage systems that the Romans built in the territories under their control were destroyed; new sewerage systems were practically not built in the Middle Ages. The role of the toilet was performed by an ordinary pot, which was placed under the bed, and the contents of it splashed out directly into the street. The night vase of Charlemagne can be seen in the Avignon Museum. An ordinary copper cauldron with handles - that's all that the great ruler could afford. True, in the castles there were still toilets with a primitive sewage system: they went outside the premises, as if hanging over the wall of the castle, and a stone drain departed from these booths, through which sewage flowed. In the French "sieve" of Carcassonne, you can see a toilet located at the very top outside the fortress wall. The sewage flowed over the stones, solidifying in centuries as anthracite lava. 
Another castle toilet system is a stone seat above a deep shaft. Here, the products of vital activity could not be left as a keepsake for posterity, so once a year gold miners descended into the mine on ropes, scraped sewage from the walls and dumped them directly into the moat.
In France, they were not smart at all. The cry "Gare l" eau! "("Attention! It's pouring!") meant that the contents of the pot would now pour directly onto the heads of passers-by. 
Renaissance and the toilet
During the Renaissance, the construction of urban sewage systems began to gain momentum. Although the night vase remains the most popular, which by the 18th century. was already a real work of art: faience chamber pots were decorated with inlays and painted. 
The nobility went into fashion for portable ceramic bidets. 
By the way, many famous firms that now produce sanitary ware originated from small manufactories that produced dishes, faience, night vases and bidets. The thought of the titans of the Renaissance could not get around the problem of the toilet. 
Leonardo da Vinci, when he was invited to the court of King François the First, was so shocked by the stench of Paris that he designed a flush toilet especially for his patron. The Leonardo codex shows a drawing made by the hands of a genius, which depicts a toilet bowl. In Leonardo's drawings, water supply pipes, sewer outlet pipes, and even ventilation shafts are indicated. But, as in the case of a submarine and a helicopter, Leonardo, as always, was ahead of his time. The drawings have remained drawings... The name of the great Leonardo, attached to the history of the toilet, raises the object itself to a certain height, flattering the author's vanity. At that time, London toilets were built right above the Thames. However, over time, the amount of runoff increased so much that it threatened to block the tributaries of the Thames. Then toilets began to be built right on the city streets, giving them a very cultivated look. One of these toilets is now in the Museum of London. 
The golden age of the toilet
Since the end of the 16th century, the mainstream of toilet building has moved to Britain. In 1590, Sir John Harington for Queen Elizabeth I created a working model of a toilet with a cistern and a water tank - almost as we know it today. The first toilet bowl cost 30 shillings and 6 pence. However, as historians write, the inventor made two cardinal mistakes. One refers to the structure, the other, as they would say today, to its name. The first was that the ancestor of the current water closet smelled strongly, which the monarch often complained about. The second mistake concerned the name: the inventor called his brainchild "Metamorphosis of Ajax" (in English slang, "jax" means a closet), which was understood by contemporaries as a metamorphosis of the throne, because of which the queen had to listen to many jokes that annoyed her. According to other sources, the sixty-year-old Elizabeth did not like the innovation because she seriously feared that through the sewerage system, enemies could deprive her of her virginity and thereby harm her. But in those years when Harrington was designing his technical miracle, there was no running water in London - there was no question of the widespread use of the apparatus. 50 years later, the French responded with their invention. King Louis 14 was presented with a ship in the form of an easy chair, in which one could sit for hours waiting for a pleasant "moment" and talk with visitors. In 1775, London watchmaker Alexander Cumming created the first flush toilet, by which time London already had running water. In 1778, another inventor, Joseph Bramah, invented the cast iron toilet bowl and the hinged lid. This invention was already a success - the townspeople quickly bought it up. More toilet bowls were made of enameled steel. One such example can be seen in the Hofburg, the Vienna residence of the Habsburgs. Soon a faience toilet bowl appeared - it was more convenient to wash it. The golden hour of toilets struck in the 19th century.
Broke, alas, not from a good life. In 1830, Asiatic cholera struck Europe, spreading along with contaminated sewage water. Typhoid fever was another scourge. The governments have understood: it is time to shell out for sewerage. Here, the question arose about the modern level of toilet seats. It was then that the “Three Musketeers” of toilet design appeared: George Jennings, Thomas Twyford and Thomas Crapper. Locksmith Thomas Krepper patented his invention - a toilet with a drain barrel) from a small village in the north of England invented the modern toilet bowl. The main thing in the invention is a U-shaped elbow with a water seal that cuts off the toilet room from the sewer. 
To increase the flow, Krepper installed a water tank high under the ceiling, and adapted a chain with a handle to the drain valve lever. Two royal mechanics, George Jennings and Thomas Twyford, became interested in the invention of the village locksmith and, supplementing it with an automatic water inlet valve, which was used on the then steam locomotives, presented the creation to Queen Victoria. Thomas Crapper is the most famous: the British still call toilet bowls “crapper”, long sitting in the restroom is denoted by the verb “crap”, and in the native village of the inventor there is a church in which there is a stained-glass window with a mosaic image of a toilet bowl. And in 1915, the time came for siphon cisterns, which can be placed very low - just above the toilet seat. 
Our days…
In 1912, 40,000 toilet bowls were made in Russia. 
Even the Bolsheviks did not dare to stop this orgy - in 1929 in Soviet Russia they made 150,000 toilet bowls a year, and in the first Stalinist five-year plan, "sanitary faience" was a separate line: the country needed 280,000 toilet bowls a year. This very device with a cast-iron cistern under the ceiling and a handle on a chain has survived to this day in station toilets and provincial military registration and enlistment offices. In the era of industrial housing construction of the 60s, “compacts” came to new apartments, that is, toilet bowls with a lower faience tank. Today they make up 92% of the country's toilet park. The advantages of old-fashioned compacts include low price and relatively long service life - 20 years. The disadvantages are known to all: poor quality of ceramics, which quickly leads to treacherous yellowing, extremely poor quality of drain fittings, noisy set and drain of water. 
Currently, hundreds of companies around the world are engaged in the production of toilet bowls. High technology has long been the norm in the toilet industry. A modern closet is endowed with additional functions and characteristics, ranging from aesthetic to medical. There is a toilet in almost every dwelling of a person.
