If one were asked to name the invention that has most profoundly affected modern civilization, the choice would probably be found on a short list of predictable responses: the jet airplane that has metaphorically made the world many times smaller, the telephone that has allowed people to remain connected regardless of their separation distance, the automobile that has provided personal freedom of movement, as well as urban sprawl, or perhaps television that allows whole communities to simultaneously witness events such as war or moon landings.

However, the invention that has had the most impact on the very size and concentration of human civilization is none of these. Rather, it is the toilet (with a concomitant waste treatment device) that has made possible high density human population. Consider what life in a large city would be like if everyone in a 50 story apartment tower had to use the same outhouse. Or worse, if everyone emptied their chamberpots off the balcony as was still commonplace less than a hundred and fify years ago. It would bring a whole new meaning to the phase "morning rush hour".

Without the toilet, high density cities would not be possible. And yet, perhaps because of it's simiplicity and ubiquity, it is assumed the toilet has been around for a long time. In fact, the toilet is a relatively modern device developed in the same era that begot train travel and wire communication: the industrial revolution during the middle and late nineteenth century. And as with much of the industrial revolution, England was the cradle.

By the early eighteen hundreds with rapidly growing populations and increasing pollution problems, cities in Europe and America undertook to do what the Romans had done centuries earlier. Bring clean water into the cities and flush wastes into a body of water away from the city. But this was the age of invention and industrialization. As soon as a reliable source of water was available, individual inventors in Europe as well as America working separately began to develop devices to remove wastes from habitats.

Because the patent offices of England and the United States have maintained several hundred years of records for patent applications, the inventors of sanitary equipment are fairly well documented. Credit for the invention of the toilet is usually bestowed on Sir John Harington, a relative of the Queen, as far back as 1596. It was claimed two models were actually made and used. But none survived, if they even existed at all. Crediting Harington for inventing the toilet is the same as anointing Leonardo Da Vinci as father of the helicopter. Conceptionally they may have had a good idea, but making it actually function is something entirely different. Approximately two hundred years later in 1775, Alexander Cummings received an English patent for putting a water trap under a bowl. This was a major advancement towards a true functioning toilet yet nothing changed in the general market. In fact, until iron foundries improved cast iron pipe and potteries improved terra cotta pipe in the 1800's, if there had been a functioning toilet, it would have been placed in the outhouse anyway.

The first waste removal devices for residences in England and the United States during the nineteenth century were mechanical not hydraulic. "The earthcloset" was something of a portable outhouse found in many houses. Dry granular clay was dispensed from a hopper into a box to desiccate waste and prevent odor. When the box was full the earth and waste could be removed for disposal elsewhere. It was a semi-automated kitty litter box for people. A small improvement over a hole in the backyard with a bench over it.

The most efficient first generation toilet was the simplest. A bowl with a hole in the front or back and a p-trap beneath filled with water to seal the house from sewer gas. Basically what Alexander Cummings had designed a century prior. In configuration, it is little different than a typical kitchen sink. Yet it is a major improvement over devices that used values or pans to seal the bowl from the malodorous putrefaction seeping from the septic pit.

These first generation toilets came to be known as "wash-out" water closets. Several companies in England were selling them as early as the 1870's. One company, Thomas Twyford of England, is given credit for the first all-ceramic toilet. The "dolphin" wash-out was exhibited at the 1876 world's fair in Philadelphia, although it is not certain that Twyford was the manufacturer. These new English wash-out toilets proved very popular where municipalities had installed water and waste lines. Toilets were exported to the continent and America spawning interest by local manufacturers.

The wash-out while a major advancement over an out house or chamber pot, still left much to be desired. They were not efficient. If all the waste did not go through the p-trap, putrification odors would result. Manufacturers and inventors continued to search for improvements. The first improvement was combining the pool of water in the bowl with the p-trap. These toilets, known as "wash-downs", were on the market shortly following the wash-out. However, both wash-outs and wash-downs often failed to consistently remove heavier waste from the bowl. By the end of the century, sanitaryware manufacturers had discovered that by diverting some of the water from the cistern to the bottom of the bowl, a jet flush was created that pushed waste out and if they changed the shape of the p-trap exit it would act like a siphon pulling the waste out. The modern flush toilet (as seen in the right below) was born. English historians credit a pottery in Chelsea, the Beaufort Works, as the first to develop a toilet with a flush tube to the bottom of the bowl in 1886, although an American had received a patent in America 10 years earlier for a similar concept.