The Humble Toilet - An invention that needs a lot more appreciation than it gets!

By Aryan Jagadish

Aryan in this short story offers a humorous take on how the toilet came about. This short story was his response to the writing prompt, “If you have to think of an invention that transformed humankind significantly, which one would that be? It could be something extremely ordinary such as a toothbrush or something futuristic like AI.” Read on. It is bound to set you thinking…

Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash

My friends, the toilet is in my opinion one of the most important inventions that humankind has ever made. Just imagine what kind of world this would be without this mighty invention - all generations of people from your grandmother to a newborn baby just going wherever they pleased! Such a disaster, don't you think? The toilet is such an ingenious invention that has benefitted humanity for years and will continue doing so for years to come.

Let me tell you a short story to illustrate life before the beloved toilet.

In the early days, when there were no cell phones and all people did was hunt and gather, the concept of houses did not exist. They obviously had to relieve themselves somewhere after eating and drinking. Their system for relieving themselves continued to be quite primitive even after they started to build houses - they would simply go behind houses, near the lake or, believe it or not, in a pit covered with sand! I don't even have to describe the atrocious smell, but it was absolutely traumatizing.

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

Then came along an intelligent man named John*. He was an experimental thinker who actually enjoyed using the sandy pits to do his business discreetly. This sparked an idea - what if he could create a version of the sandy pit but with water flowing through it? Not the most advanced design, but it was a huge leap forward as it allowed waste to be washed away instead of accumulating near homes.

*This name is fictional. Any coincidence with any person living or dead is coincidental.

At first, people were skeptical of using John's invention. But after eating four whole wild boars, well, you just have to let it go! As more and more people tried it out, they were hooked. Subsequent inventors improved upon the initial toilet design, adding flushing systems to conserve water and more comfortable seating.

Photo by Curology on Unsplash

And now we arrive in the present day, where most of us fail to appreciate how monumental the toilet really is. Sure, it's not as simple as the old sand pits, but it performs that same core function for society and does so much more hygienically. Just imagine if we still had to relieve ourselves openly with no way to clean up afterward! Harsh indeed. Without the toilet, we'd likely have chamber pots under our beds, smelly outhouses, and streets flowing with sewage.

With that silly fictional story, I wanted to prove how important even an item that is behind closed doors or hidden in plain sight can be. We as humans don’t appreciate the small things of life whether be toilets or lightbulbs. This is invention number one that seems so casual and useless but is something super useful, stick around for the next invention where I talk about some other household item that hides in everyday life but is super common.

---

 Interesting fact: Sir John Harrington, godson of Queen Elizabeth I, is credited with the very first toilet design. He built a water closet with a raised cistern and a small downpipe through which water ran to flush the waste. This was the year 1592. Read more here.

---

If you enjoyed reading this article and would love to read more about the work that these amazing teens do, please subscribe to our magazine for free.

Subscribe