One of the secrets of a good book is a curious author. Consider this from Matt Ridley:
How many people ever think about such things? The fact that a city as big as London doesn’t smell of sewage is now taken for granted, in spite of the fact the opposite was true for quite a long time. This is “one of the finest achievements of our civilization”, writes Ridley, and he is not joking.
One of the key elements behind the ingredients was the S-bend in the pipe beneath every toilet, which traps water so as to prevent the smell to come back up. Before it, “flush toilets were expensive and unreliable and they had the huge disadvantage that they took away the sewage but not its smell”. The S-bend, “one of those things that could have been invented at almost any time and by almost anybody”, was actually the product of a “fine mathematical mind at the height of the Enlightenment”, Alexander Cummings.
It may sound strange to recommend a book on innovation because he neatly presents, in only a few pages, the history of the water closet and the modern sewage network – but I think this is not a minor merit of Ridley’s book.
Besides commending Matt’s walking habits, I think it is worth stressing again the logic of the book: “innovation” consists not only of things that are big, visible, and breath-taking (pardon the pun). Innovation is a pervasive phenomenon in a modern economy, all the more relevant in the daily undertakings of life, that are improved, little by little, with most of us not noticing it and happily taking for granted a better status quo than our forerunners ever dreamt possible.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2020 at 9:54am
This goes to your point in the previous post about innovation preceding discovery. I do not know this for a fact, but given when Cummings was living, he probably sought to invent the S-bend for sanitary reasons. At that point in time, the scientific community believed that miasma (bad air) caused disease. The solution was to get rid of the bad air. The S-bend, by trapping the smells, kept the disease out.
Of course, it was the removing of raw sewage that helped prevent disease.* But if the smell remained with indoor plumbing, many people who could afford such luxury would not likely use it because the miasma remained. Why not just dispose of human waste the old-fashioned way, in giant night-soil pits? The invention of this smell bend made toilets more appealing, both for sensory reasons and in light of the scientific understanding of the day. In a sense, the S-Bend encouraged the use of the real innovation, the toilet.
*If it was done properly. Part of the cause of the Broad Street Chlorea Outbreak of 1854 was a poorly-designed sewer butting up against a poorly-designed water well and infected water seeping into the drinking well
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2020 at 9:56am
I should note that I am recounting the causes of the Broad Street Outbreak from memory. Though my books on the Outbreak are just 6 feet away, I am too lazy to double check. Some of the details may be incorrect, but the general arc and general point are correct.
David Henderson
Aug 14 2020 at 10:26am
So you’re socially distancing from even your books now?
Oh, and great post, Alberto.
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2020 at 10:29am
Nah. Just waiting for the coffee to kick in 🙂
Mike Sproul
Aug 14 2020 at 11:05am
The S-bend is INSIDE the toilet, not below it. Otherwise you would not see a pool of water at the bottom of the toilet bowl.
Daniel Hill
Aug 14 2020 at 12:00pm
True but in all other plumbing such as sinks it’s below. Wonder why there’s a picture of a leaking s bend though
JK Brown
Aug 14 2020 at 2:54pm
Actually, these days the S-trap is outlawed on almost all but toilets where it is built into the commode itself. This is due to the tendency to create a suction that drains the trap when water is run through them due to the unvented downward flow. The suction is a fundamental part of the toilet’s operation so part of the design. These days the plumbing must be vented and P-traps (single bends) are used with vent pipes at downward turns.
JK Brown
Aug 14 2020 at 3:15pm
A few years ago, I read ‘The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950’ (1952), Frederick Allen Lewis. It is quite a nice survey of all the changes in American life over the period, from horse culture to automobiles, books to broadcast, etc. Major shifts is how the average person lived. But I wondered why we didn’t have a similar survey for the next 50 years or, now 70 years. But even the iPhone was only the consolidation and minaturization of other technology in life. Not like going from horse and buggy to Oldsmobile.
But, having an interest in electronics, there are lots of changes happening beneath the surface of our devices with microprocessors and the expansion of using hundreds of thousands of transistors like in the iPhone. Electric motors look the same and often are the same item built in 1920 or so, but the electronics have revolutionized the motor controllers, for instance, making the motor far more useful and efficient. Software even more. Apparently, buyers place 50+% of the value of a new car in the software features. Some car companies are looking to move to a subscriber model for features on new cars.
Innovation is still improving our world, but not as overtly dramatically as moving from the woodstove to the electric range.
Phil H
Aug 15 2020 at 11:57am
“…a better status quo than our forerunners ever dreamt possible.”
What a good thing it is that we have strong governments that help maintain the status quo.
….
OK, that was just deliberately contentious, on this website. More seriously, the institution that I think helps maintain the quality of life we have is the law, or rule of law. And that does entail government action, but also restricts it.
Perhaps in the next installment, AM will tell us if Ridley gives an opinion on what level of law is the most conducive to the maintenance and stimulation of innovation.
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