h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please can anyone help with a question that has kept me awake for far too long.

Who designs toilet seats?

Where do they get their measurements for a seat that will suit all sizes?

How do they get the measurements?

This seems to me to be a sorely neglected item of home furnishings despite it being used daily by a large portion of the worlds population.

Don't know, but I can add a question.
Who designed the one I met in France recently where you pressed a button, preferably after getting off it, and the plastic cover you'd been sitting on chugged away into the bowels of the loo and was replaced by new plastic all ready for the next customer?
Wz

I believe that Thomas Crapper's company did many experiments in the 19th century with the shape of the bowl and the shape of the seat. This is described in the book "Flushed with Pride".

Or the ones in Austria (which fascinated my daughter so much that she visited every loo we saw) where when you go in a light flashes on a button, asking you to press it. Then an arm comes out of the back, and the seat slowly rotates and is wiped by an (unseen) disinfectant source. The same thing happens when you flush afterwards.

Well and there was I recently wondering if there was a loo that had been designed to lower the seat AFTER the males of the family had left the toilet seat up.A voice activated one would be brilliant but not a remote contolled one as one would invariably lose the said remote.

Here in Britain we have a program called 'Tomorrow's World', which looks at new inventions or techniques. Usually the inventions are serious, but sometimes they do a silly one, just for fun. Some time ago they did a device that fits to the toilet lid or to the cistern, or wherever the toilet seat rests when it's up. The device was used to indicate the seat position, for those occasions when you blunder into the bathroom at night and don't want to have to switch the light on to go. The device consisted of a sensor and two lights. If the toilet seat was down, a green light showed; if the seat was up, a red light showed. The neat thing was that the red light was positioned so that it shone down into the pan, so that a man didn't have a choice of turning the light on (painful) or aiming 'by fall of shot' (potentially messy).

In case anybody thought that bit was serious, Thomas Crapper is a myth.

Oh, crap!?!

3

JOTD: I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.

Is Crapper a myth?So where did the word crap come from?

That bit was serious. Thomas Crapper is not a myth. Go to the Science Museum in London and you will see some of his wares. He really was a victorian toilet designer. He invented the siphoning flush cistern.

Although Crapper really existed, the word crap already existed at his time. Maybe it was a case of the name fitting the job, like the well known (genuine) Irish solicitors Argue and Phibbs.

Crapper existed but he did *not* invent the toilet, as many people seem to think. He just designed them and invented one part.

Once the toilet seat develops a crack, however small, chuck it out immediately. Whatever the size of your bottom the seat will manage to pinch it excruciatingly.

There's a nip in the air.

My mother claims to have a scar on her bottom, caused when the potty she was using as a child broke underneath her. I say 'claims', because I have never seen it, nor do I wish to!

Whereas she can claim to have seen yours.

The job fitting the name is called nominative determinism. Just a bit of trivia for you.

3

JOTD: The only thing worse than X Winsows: (X Windows) - X

The inventor of the toilet was one Sir John Harrington, godson of Elizabeth I. However, his design had one major flaw that wasn't addressed until 1775. That design flaw... sewer gas. There was no "house trap" (a U-shaped pipe you'll find under your sink) to keep the stink from coming up the pipes. Plus, he managed to piss off Elizabeth when he wrote a tribute to himself entitled "The Metamorphosis of Ajax." He made too many puns in it, and Elizabeth got tired of the jokes about her new "throne" that she banished Harrington and threw out his toilet.

Regarding Thomas Crapper: "And if any readers had thought the honor [of designing the first toilet] belonged to a Victorian named Sir Thomas Crapper, they've been hoaxed. Wallace Rayburn wrote a straight-faced satire called 'Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper.' The book's wickedly well done, down to quoting obscure royal charters, with antique spellings." - "An Underground Education", Richard Zacks, Doubleday

As if the name wasn't enough to tip you off... frankly, I'm a bit disappointed in all of you...

Reading the book, "Flushed with Pride", the history of Thomas Crapper, it is impossible to tell whether it is:

a) entirely true
b) complete hoax

There is no hint whatsoever in it that anyone might consider it funny, and is a masterly work for this reason.

I kept an open mind on the existence of Crapper until about three years ago I found a genuine toilet cistern made by Crapper in the Science Museum in London. This is not a hoax. The man did exist. As I said before, he invented the siphoning flush cistern, which is the cistern we all know and love. The siphon ensures that no water drips down into the bowl except when the toilet is flushed. The system in use up to his time had a stopper at the bottom of the cistern which was lifted to flush the toilet. It was impossible to seal this effectively and millions of gallons of water were wasted with the non-stop of water down the toilet.

Two possibilities on that museum entry:

1) They're having a bit of fun with the myth.

2) They really don't know any better.

The Victorian who gets credit for the work Crapper is alleged to have accomplished is named Alexander Cummings. He's the one who figured out the house trap, and the one who designed the first modern toilet. This was accomplished, as I said, in 1775.

If you really want to verify the Thomas Crapper story, the best way to do it is to find another source outside of Rayburn. Surely, this fine Victorian inventor was mentioned sometime before 1969, if his story is true, wasn't he?