Shower

A shower is a place in which a person bathes under a spray of typically warm or hot water. Indoors, there is a drain in the floor. Most showers are set up to have adjustable temperature, spray pressure, and showerhead nozzle angle. The simplest showers have a swivelling nozzle aimed downward, while more complex showers have a showerhead connected to a hose that has a mounting bracket; this allows the showerer to hold the showerhead by hand to spray the water onto different parts of their body. A showerhead can be installed in a small shower stall or bathtub, with a plastic shower curtain or door. Showering is common due to the efficiency of using it compared with using a bathtub. Its use in hygiene is, therefore, common practice.

History Waterfalls have historically been used as primitive forms of showers. The falling water rinsed the bathers completely clean. It was more efficient than bathing in a traditional basin, which required manual transport of both fresh and waste water. Ancient people began to reproduce these natural phenomena by pouring jugs of water, often very cold, over themselves after washing. There has been evidence of early upper-class Egyptian and Mesopotamians having indoor shower rooms where servants would bathe them in the privacy of their own homes. However, these were primitive by modern standards, having rudimentary drainage systems, and water was carried, not pumped, into the room. Ancient Greeks had showers. Their aqueducts and water systems made of lead pipes allowed water to be pumped both into and out of large communal shower rooms used by elites and common citizens alike. These rooms have been discovered at the site of the city Pergamum and can also be found represented in pottery of the era. The depictions are very similar to modern locker room showers and even include bars to hang up clothing. The ancient Romans also followed this convention; their famous bathhouses (Thermae) can be found all around the Mediterranean and as far out as modern-day England. The Romans not only had these showers but also believed in bathing several times a week, if not every day. The water and sewage systems developed by the Greeks and Romans broke down and fell out of use after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Modern showers

The first known mechanical shower, operated by a hand pump, was patented in England in 1767 by William Feetham, a stove maker from Ludgate Hill in London. His shower contraption used the pump to force the water into a vessel above the user's head, and a chain would then be pulled to release the water from the vessel. Although the system dispensed with the servant labour of filling up and pouring out buckets of water, the showers failed to catch on with the rich, as a method for piping hot water through the system was not available. The system would also recycle the same dirty water through every cycle. This early start was significantly improved in the anonymously invented English Regency shower design of c. 1810 (there is some ambiguity among the sources). The original design was over 10 ft (3.0 m) tall, and was made of several metal pipes painted to look like bamboo. A basin suspended above the pipes fed water into a nozzle that distributed the water over the user's shoulders. The water on the ground was drained and pumped back through the pipes into the basin, where the cycle would repeat itself. The prototype was steadily improved upon in the following decades until it began to approximate the shower of today in its mode of operation. Hand-pumped models became fashionable at one point, as well as the use of adjustable sprayers for different water flows. The reinvention of reliable indoor plumbing around 1850 allowed free-standing showers to be connected to a running water source, supplying a renewable flow of water. The shower cabin was invented in 1839 by Polish-Canadian politician and engineer Aleksander Edward Kierzkowski. Modern showers were installed in the barracks of the French army in the 1870s as an economic hygiene measure, under the guidance of François Merry Delabost, a French doctor and inventor. As surgeon-general at Bonne Nouvelle prison in Rouen, Delabost had previously replaced individual baths with mandatory communal showers for use by prisoners, arguing that they were more economical and hygienic. First six, then eight shower stalls were installed. A steam engine heated the water, and in less than five minutes, up to eight prisoners could wash simultaneously with only twenty litres of water. The French system of communal showers was adopted by other armies, the first being that of Prussia in 1879, and by prisons in other jurisdictions. They were also adopted by boarding schools before being installed in public bathhouses. The first shower in a public bathhouse was in 1887 in Vienna. In France, public bathhouses and showers were established by Charles Cazalet, firstly in Bordeaux in 1893 and then in Paris in 1899. Historically, showering was relatively rare; most people regularly cleaned themselves by bathing (that is, immersion in a tub, pool, or body of water) rather than showering (by standing upright under a continuous spray of water). Due to the expense of shower technology, showers in private homes for individual use did not become popular and commonplace until the 1970s.

Types

Domestic Domestic showers are most commonly stall showers or showers combined with a bathtub. A stall shower is a dedicated shower area that uses a door or curtain to contain water spray. The shower/tub format saves bathroom space and enables the area to be used for either a bath or a shower, and commonly uses a sliding shower curtain or door to contain the water spray. Showers may also be in a wet room, in which there is no contained shower area, or in a dedicated shower room, which does not require containment of water spray. Domestic showers can have a single shower head, multiple shower heads, handheld shower head(s), or other variations, all of which may be adjustable as needed to varying degrees.

Public

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