SPINOFF...of LIW's topic: Just an FYI!...
Just who invented the crapper??
'Thomas Crapper was an innovator and inventor and held nine patents but he did not 'invent' the Water Closet, it evolved over many hundreds of years. Stone-built privies survive around the world from ancient civilizations from Scotland to Turkey, but none really qualify as 'Water Closets' as we understand the term. The more advanced versions were multi-occupant stone latrines which were sluiced at intervals by diverting a nearby stream.
Arguably, the first W.C. was invented in 1592 by Sir John Harington, of the town of Bath in Somerset. His device had a seat, a bowl and behind it a cistern of water for washing away the contents. He called it the 'Ajax' and built one for himself and one for his Godmother, Queen Elizabeth I. The invention was then comprehensively ignored for two hundred years!
From 1775 new patents came regularly and the loo gradually developed until pioneers like Mr. Crapper and his contemporaries, such as George Jennings, Thomas Twyford, Edward Johns and Henry Doulton began producing W.C.s much as we know them today.
THAT WORD
'Crap' was an ancient word for rubbish or chaff which had fallen out of use in Britain by the end of the 16th century, therefore in Victorian times there was nothing amusing about the surname 'Crapper'. However early English settlers to America took the word with them and so in the U.S.A. it has been used continuously.
In 1917, American servicemen stationed in London were hugely amused to see the name emblazoned on cisterns and W.C. bowls (although their English friends could not see the joke) and so began to call the whole W.C. apparatus 'the Crapper'. This phrase caught on in America on their return, presumably because it made sense to those who were aware of the vulgarism 'crap'.
Due to American cultural influences upon Great Britain and Europe the word 'crap' is now widely used and the humour in the surname is universally appreciated.'
Going to the 'crapper' will never quite be the same!!
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'Thomas Crapper was an innovator and inventor and held nine patents but he did not 'invent' the Water Closet, it evolved over many hundreds of years. Stone-built privies survive around the world from ancient civilizations from Scotland to Turkey, but none really qualify as 'Water Closets' as we understand the term. The more advanced versions were multi-occupant stone latrines which were sluiced at intervals by diverting a nearby stream.
Arguably, the first W.C. was invented in 1592 by Sir John Harington, of the town of Bath in Somerset. His device had a seat, a bowl and behind it a cistern of water for washing away the contents. He called it the 'Ajax' and built one for himself and one for his Godmother, Queen Elizabeth I. The invention was then comprehensively ignored for two hundred years!
From 1775 new patents came regularly and the loo gradually developed until pioneers like Mr. Crapper and his contemporaries, such as George Jennings, Thomas Twyford, Edward Johns and Henry Doulton began producing W.C.s much as we know them today.
THAT WORD
'Crap' was an ancient word for rubbish or chaff which had fallen out of use in Britain by the end of the 16th century, therefore in Victorian times there was nothing amusing about the surname 'Crapper'. However early English settlers to America took the word with them and so in the U.S.A. it has been used continuously.
In 1917, American servicemen stationed in London were hugely amused to see the name emblazoned on cisterns and W.C. bowls (although their English friends could not see the joke) and so began to call the whole W.C. apparatus 'the Crapper'. This phrase caught on in America on their return, presumably because it made sense to those who were aware of the vulgarism 'crap'.
Due to American cultural influences upon Great Britain and Europe the word 'crap' is now widely used and the humour in the surname is universally appreciated.'
Going to the 'crapper' will never quite be the same!!
