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The Invention of the Water Purification System and Its Impact on Public Health
How cities learned to make drinking water safe, from sand filters and chlorine to modern treatment, and how those steps helped cut waterborne disease.
Energy and Water
Clean Water
Water treatment, desalination and recycling as history.
Sand Filters and City Water Supplies
How nineteenth century cities adopted the slow sand filter for municipal water, from London's 1852 law to Hamburg's cholera epidemic and the rise of rapid filters.
The Invention of the First Water Purification System: A Clean Water Source
From ancient settling, straining and boiling to the early 1800s sand filters in Paisley and London, a careful look at what counts as the first purification system.
The Invention of the Water Desalination Plant and Its Impact on Water Preservation
How turning seawater into fresh water grew from sailors' stills and steamship distillers into the large thermal desalination plants of the dry Gulf region.
The Invention of the Water Desalination System and Its Impact on Water Preservation
How reverse osmosis membranes were developed in the mid-twentieth century and why membrane desalination became the dominant way to make fresh water from salt water.
The Invention of the Water Purification System: A Safe and Clean Source of Water
How chlorine disinfection entered city water supplies in the early 1900s, from emergency use in Maidstone to Jersey City and the spread of chlorination worldwide.
The Invention of the Water Purification Tablet and Its Impact on Public Health
A history-only look at portable water treatment tablets, from early military disinfection to halazone, iodine and chlorine tablets used by travelers and relief workers.
The Invention of the Water Recycling System and Its Impact on Water Preservation
How wastewater reuse developed, from nineteenth century sewage farms and activated sludge to Windhoek, Orange County and the water systems of space stations.
The Shaduf and Irrigation Lifting Devices
How the counterweighted shaduf lifted river water to Mesopotamian and Egyptian fields, and how later devices such as the sakia, noria and Archimedes screw built on it.
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