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Telephonic Shower

Telephonic Shower

The history of the shower is as old as the human race.  Little did our first ancestors know when they stood under waterfalls to wash themselves clean after a hunt that they were engaging in something that would become a daily tradition for most of the world.  Although showering has in fact been around as long as our species, it wavers through history going in and out of popularity.  

The Egyptian Pharaoh’s were one of the first groups to invest in showering as opposed to bathing in ponds or streams. Excavations of ancient tombs and homes show stalls with a defined area and jars for water.  The Pharaoh would stand in the stall while servants poured water over them from above.  It was thought the Pharaoh’s were afraid of germs in the bath waters of other people and only pure water could be poured on them.  Though Romans liked the baths, Greeks also preferred standing under pipes which came from aqueducts with the belief that it washed the grime away and revitalized the skin.  Just as Rome affected all cultures with their beliefs in so many areas, they also affected the history of showers as most of Europe took to bathing the roman way and showers edged out of history.
The dominance of bathtubs over showers continued until the early 1800’s when English bathtub maker created the English Regency Shower, a clumsy contraption made of metal that had then been painted to look like bamboo.  The aristocracy to the time was not amused with this new invention or the complicated fact the water in it was re-circulated, and it did not catch on.  In the mid 19th century another shower emerged that had slightly more success.
When plumbing started becoming an indoor feature, the system of pipes and drains led designers to explore new ways to get clean. By the 1890’s the first showers of that era had a porcelain basin connected to a drain and a metal cage with shower heads at different locations to hit the body at every angle. A rubber curtain was pulled around the small appliance leaving a claustrophobic place to stand in. One of the early showers was Ewarts Improved Spray Baths which held 10 nozzles to spray the entire body. It became known as the needle shower because the fine spray of water felt like needles against the skin. In the early 1900’s it was determined by doctors that women simply were not meant to endure that pain and showering was bad for them.  The shower again went into decline.
During World War One many inventions came into being simply to accommodate the needs of the massive military numbers and involvement.  Wanting to conserve both water and time, showers were determined to be a better way for many soldiers to get clean in a hurry. Barracks were eventually constructed to have showers. They were so successful that after the war schools and gymnasiums also began to utilize shower technology. Showers were not found in homes until much later.
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s western culture was still highly in favor of the bath as the optimum mode of cleaning. But two things happened that would change American views permanently. The first was a shift in how people felt about hygiene. For most of Europe and America a weekly bath was good enough.  Before indoor plumbing the effort of preparing a bath was enough to make you only want to do it once a week. After indoor plumbing and water heaters became popular it was more convenient but still the habit was to bathe once a week.  Eventually, ideas about bacteria, disease and cleanliness became part of the community of knowledge and people wanted to bath more often. Taking a bath daily added a lot of time to the routine.  The second factor in the shower’s success was men returning home from World War Two. Like the first war, showers were the main form of cleanliness for men in the barracks and they came home still wanting to take them and were not pleased with the Victorian bathtubs that still sat in their home.  It was at that time the telephonic shower head was created.
Even the wealthiest of people didn’t have showers in their homes in the 1940’s. So when a large demand went out for showering ability the hand-held, snake corded telephonic shower head complete with a pneumatic pump to run it was developed by J.L. Motts Ironworks Co.  This device would could be attached to a regular bathtub brought a first real sense of showering to western culture.  By the 1950’s countries in the third world and other highly populated regions were investing in indoor plumping and housing. The need for space was evident so those houses were built just with showers with telephonic handles to accommodate the need to for space, and the personalization of where people needed the water to hit.
Showering stayed the same until the early 1970’s when Water Pik, a company that specialized in dental care decided to use its technology for propelling water to clean teeth to propelling spurts of water which acted as a massage.  They came out with the Shower Massage, an item so popular almost every hotel and house in America had one. Eventually the large plastic telephonic nozzle with varying water speeds became big and clunky and modern telephonic heads replaces the shower massage in most bathrooms.  The need for the telephonic head is greater than ever as people want more individual say in the type and quality of their shower.
From cavemen under waterfalls to executives with chrome telephonic showers, the act of being clean has come a long way forward. Still our need for comfort, control and cleanliness survive and will be with us as time moves on.