King Minos of Crete owned the world's first flushing water closet over 2800 years ago. The invention did not appear again until 1594, when Sir John Harrington built a "prive in perfection" for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth. It took 200 years before the idea surfaced again. Here are some highlights from the toilet's long and noble history.

In earliest times people relieved themselves wherever they happened to be.

Ancient Romans built latrines over running water to carry off wastes to the Tiber River. They developed the art of plumbing and constructed underground sewers made of lead, earthenware, or stone.

During the Middle Ages, people in the British isles used chamber pots made of glass and metal at night. In the morning they emptied their chamber pots out the window.

Queen Elizabeth I used a portable toilet shaped like a box covered with red velvet and trimmed in lace with a lid and carrying handles. Her Godson, Sir John Harrington, invented a flushing toilet for her in 1596.

When millions in Europe died from cholera in 1832, people began to realize that poor sanitary conditions caused the disease to spread. Parisians rioted and Emperor Napoleon III had old sewers cleaned and new ones built. The government in Britain passed laws requiring houses to have some kind of flushing toilet or privy.

Thomas Crapper, a British plumber, developed a type of flushing toilet in 1872. He perfected the cistern - the tank that holds the water for flushing and made flushing quieter. The American soldiers stationed in England during World War I who returned to the US used his name as a euphemism for the toilet.

The Victorians regarded the toilet as a status symbol and made the of fine glazed earthenware and hand painted them with flowers or sculpted them as lions and swans holding the basin on their backs.

Thomas Jefferson devised an indoor privy at Monticello by rigging up a system of pulleys. Servants used the device to haul away chamber pots in his earth closet, which was a wooden box enclosing a pan of wood ashes below, and a seat with a hole cut out at the top.

In 1829, the architect Isaiah Rogers designed the Tremont Hotel in Boston. It was the first hotel to have indoor plumbing. On the ground floor he installed eight water closets.

By the 1860s, many wealthy Americans had indoor flush toilets imported from England. The tanks had pull-chains and were mounted high on the wall above the bowls.

From 1910 to the 1920s, the elevated water tank was gradually lowered and placed closer to the bowl until tank and bowl finally became one unit.

1981 NASA developed an advanced Waste Management System (WMS) for use on the Space Shuttle Orbiter. Click here to learn more about the "space" toilet.

Today, in an effort to conserve water, companies are designing toilets that recycle wastewater from the sink into the tank or low flush models that use only about 1.6 gallons of water

Sources:
 •Toilets, Toasters & Telephones: The How and Why of Everyday Objects
  By Susan Goldman Rubin
  Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998

 •Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers
  By Penny Colman
  Macmillan, 1994

 •Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper
  By Wallace Reyburn
  Fourth Estate, 1998