Thomas Crapper Day
Yes its true. Today we celebrate the man behind the porcelain throne - Thomas Crapper. (hee hee - he said crap!) Though credited by many as the inventor of the flush toilet, Crapper (hee hee - he said crap. Again!) was not, but he did popularize the WC (water closet).

He was a shrewd businessman, salesman and self-publicist. In a time when bathroom fixtures were barely spoken of, he heavily promoted sanitary plumbing and pioneered the concept of the bathroom fittings showroom*

Crapper (hee hee - he said crap. Again!!) did hold numerous patents that helped modernize indoor plumbing. His company, Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd., (hee hee - he said crap. Again!!!) is still creating reproductions of his original designs.

BTW - About the word Crap (hee hee - he said crap. Again!!!!) …

…is old in the English language, one of a group of nouns applied to discarded cast offs, like “residue from renderings” (1490s) or … probably extended from Middle English crappe “chaff, or grain that has been trodden underfoot in a barn” (c. 1440), deriving ultimately from Late Latin crappa, “chaff.”
Yet another purported explanation is that Crapper’s flush toilet advertising was so widespread that “crapper”  became a synonym for “toilet” and people simply assumed that he was the inventor.*

photo credit: public domain (via wikipedia)
*link: wikipedia - Thomas Crapper (hee hee - he said crap. Again!!!!!) 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 11:02 am and is filed under Dailys, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.