How the
Victorians
ruined the world
We think of Britain’s 19th-century ancestors as great
engineers and scientists but, asks Kat Arney, did their
innovations cause more problems than they solved?
A ‘Twycliffe’
flushing lavatory
from the turn of
the 20th centuryThey sent sewage
down the pan
They motored along the road
to environmental disaster
One of the most notable inventions at
that era-defining London expo, the
Great Exhibition of 1851, was George
Jennings’ water closet. Flushed with
excitement at this toilet technology,
many Londoners installed water-based
loos in their homes, connecting them to
surface drains. This might have made
their lives less smelly but it wasn’t good
news for everyone. Soon, the capital
had become rife with cholera, prompt-
ing Sir Joseph Bazalgette to build the
intercepting sewer system, along with
impressive sewage pumping stations.
This rush to flush meant that more
sustainable low-water solutions, such as
Henry Moule’s earth closet (1860), failed
to flourish. But waterless toilets like the
Loowatt are gaining ground today,
providing safe sanitation and generating
fertiliser and energy to boost the local
economy in developing countries. Where
there’s muck, there’s brass!The motor car traces its roots back to
the 1860s, when Austrian inventor
Siegfried Marcus built a pushcart
powered by a gasoline-fuelled internal
combustion engine. By the turn of the
20th century, cars were becoming
increasingly popular, opening up rural
areas and giving travellers a taste of
t f dToday there are more than a billion
cars worldwide, mostly powered by
petrol or diesel engines, contributing to
at least a tenth of global carbon dioxide
emissions as well as other pollutants.
On top of that, there are diesel-pow-
ered trains and ships, and those
kerosene-burning jet planes.
Y t th i t l ombustion engine
y ution available to the
g engines, powered by
h g re a promising
a g on any available
cow dung, miniature
n be driven by the
h tea. Victorian
g s also explored the
p cars, as well as
h d g gi
I , onvenience and
y cars won out, fuelled
b g g ork of filling stations.
B ol of fossil fuels,
a g mental concerns, is
e g g s engineers to take
a es oo a so e of these alterna-
gSiegfried Marcus’s
pioneering motor
car, pictured in
c1870trtrueueffrereededomom.. Yet the internal co
wasn’t the only solu
VVictorians. Stirling e
hheat exchange, wer
aalternative. Running
fufuel, from wood to c
veversions could even
heheat from a cup of t
trransport engineers
popotential of electric
hyhydrogen engines.
In the end, the co
flffleexibility ofpetrol c
byby a growing netwo
BBut a shrinking poo
allong with environm
enncouraging today’
a fresh look at some
tivve technologies.HISTORY