Original version

BBC World Service

BBC World Service Radio

World Service Radio

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Factual: Money

The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world

Tim Harford tells the fascinating stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which have helped create the economic world.

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Australasia

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: S-Bend

Discussion & Talk

News

S-Bend

02/09/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, S-Bend

The S-bend was a pipe with a curve in it, an invention that led to public sanitation

The S-bend was a bit of pipe with a curve in it. This simple invention became the missing ingredient to create the flushing toilet – and, with it, public sanitation as we know it.

If you live in a city with modern sanitation, it’s hard to imagine daily life being permeated with the suffocating stench of human excrement. For that, we have a number of people to thank – not least a London watchmaker called Alexander Cumming. Cumming’s world-changing invention owed nothing to precision engineering. In 1775, he patented the S-bend. It was a bit of pipe with a curve in it and it became the missing ingredient to create the flushing toilet – and, with it, public sanitation as we know it. Roll-out was slow, but it was a vision of how public sanitation could be – clean, and smell-free – if only government would fund it. More than two centuries later, two and a half billion people still remain without improved sanitation, and improved sanitation itself is a low bar. We still haven’t reliably managed to solve the problem of collective action – of getting those who exercise power or have responsibility to organise themselves. 

Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Vadon and Richard Knight

(Image: S-bend, Credit: ericlefrancais/Shutterstock)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

S-Bend

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service

About BBC World Service