Necessity is a mother of inventions

“Necessity is a mother of inventions”- a need or problem encourages creative efforts to solve the problem. This saying appears in the dialogue Republic, by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. There are numerous inventions which have changed our live. In my opinion the invention which mirrored the most urgent needs of humans was - a toilet..

Today’s toilet differs from its predecessor. Throughout ages people worked out the shape of what we have in a bathroom today. The earliest toilettes were found 4800 years ago in the Orkeny Islands just north of Scotland and in the Indus River Valley. These toilets did not flush with water but used gravity to carry waste to the outside of dwellings through drains. Around 2000 B.C. the palace of Crete had a system of plumbing, including a toilet that was flushed with water.

In 1596 an Englishman Sir John Harington developed a flush toilet, or water closet, for Queen Elizabeth I. In 1775 an English watchmaker Alexander Cummings improved the design. His toilet included a water trap in the exiting pipe that stopped odors from backing into the toilet room. By the 1800s, an English plumber Thomas Crapper made the inner workings of the toilet similar to those in use today.
Needless to say, we can imagine life without a computer but it would be impossible to exist without a toilet.