Backfill: Tall Tub Tales

THE DEBATE RAGES ON. Plumbing aficionados around the world still argue whether there really was a Thomas Crapper. Did he live from 1837 to 1910, and did he invent the toilet, as claimed, in 1882? Or is he a hoax? The story goes that a British engineer by the name of Thomas Crapper was knighted for inventing the Crapper Valveless Water Waste Preventer in 1882. The device, a flush toilet, helped to preserve London’s water supply by replacing freely running toilet drains. Supposedly, the British valveless toilets, with Crapper’s name on the bowls, were noticed by the U.S. soldiers in WWI. After that, “crapper” for “toilet” passed into