A flush toilet is a toilet that disposes of human liquid and solid waste, by using water to flush it through a drainpipe to another location for disposal, thus maintaining a separation between humans and their excreta. The sanitary fixture is distinctly different from a urinal, which is designed to handle only liquid waste.

Flushing mechanisms are found more often on sitting-style toilets, but many squat toilets also are made for automated flushing. Modern toilets incorporate an 'S', 'U', 'J', or 'P' shaped bend that causes the water in the toilet bowl to collect and act as a seal against sewer gases. Since flush toilets are typically not designed to handle waste on site, their drain pipes must be connected to waste conveyance and waste treatment systems. A flush toilet may be euphemistically called a lavatory, a bog (UK), a pot (US), a loo, the heads (naval), a dunny (AU/NZ), a john, a water closet (abbreviated 'W.C.'), a comfort room (abbreviated 'C.R.') or simply 'toilet'.

The first modern flushable toilet was described in 1596 by Sir John Harington, an English courtier and the godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Harington’s device called for a 2-foot-deep oval bowl waterproofed with pitch, resin and wax and fed by water from an upstairs cistern. Flushing Harington’s pot required 7.5 gallons of water—a veritable torrent in the era before indoor plumbing.

In 1775 English inventor Alexander Cumming was granted the first patent for a flush toilet. His greatest innovation was the S-shaped pipe below the bowl that used water to create a seal preventing sewer gas from entering through the toilet. In the late-19th century, a London plumbing impresario named Thomas Crapper manufactured one of the first widely successful lines of flush toilets. Crapper did not invent the toilet, but he did develop the ballcock, an improved tank-filling mechanism still used in toilets today. Crapper’s name would become synonymous with the devices he sold (although the English word “crap” predates him by centuries), thanks in part to American servicemen stationed overseas during World War I. These doughboys, unfamiliar with the relatively new-fangled invention, referred to the toilets as “crappers”—due to the Crapper brand’s ubiquity in England and Franc—and brought the term back home with them after the war.

Uploaded on May 8, 2008

Animation on how a toilet works

Category
    Film & Animation 
License
    Standard YouTube License 

Thomas Crapper (baptised 28 September 1836; died 27 January 1910) was a plumber who founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. He did, however, do much to increase the popularity of the toilet, and developed some important related inventions, such as the ballcock. He was noted for the quality of his products and received several royal warrants.

Manhole covers with Crapper's company's name on them in Westminster Abbey are now one of London's minor tourist attractions.[2][3] Thomas Crapper & Co owned the world's first bath, toilet and sink showroom, in King's Road until 1966. The firm's lavatorial equipment was manufactured at premises in nearby Marlborough Road (now Draycott Avenue).

While Thomas Crapper is commonly given credit for inventing the first flushing toilet in the late 1800s, the first version can actually be traced back to 1596. At this time, a British nobleman, Sir John Harrington, first engineered and invented a valve that could release water from the water closet (WC) when pulled. Sir Harrington, who was also the godson of Queen Elizabeth I, recommended pulling the valve (“flushing” the toilet) once a day for sanitary purposes.

So if Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the toilet, why is he given credit? Three centuries after Sir Harrington’s invention, Crapper had a successful career in the plumbing industry and did earn nine patents for plumbing products in England. Unfortunately, none of those nine patents granted between 1861-1904 were for the flushing toilet.

Analysis: Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) did exist, and was a plumber, and is, in fact, credited with improving the functionality of the early flush toilet (or 'water closet,' as it was then called), but he did not, contrary to popular belief, invent the pseudo-eponymous bathroom appliance from scratch.