TP. 178. HAND DRYER HISTORY

Around 7 scores ago (140 years), Bathrooms were beginning to be built into public buildings, including taverns. The beverage being served was, primarily, yeasty beer, and this led to a number of patrons having to empty their bladders frequently. Being mostly working class blue collar workers, getting urine on their hands was a common occurrence. Also, with the invention of medicated toilet paper in 1857, designed to treat hemorrhoids, paper malfunctions surfaced, and sinks were placed in lavatories to wash away the mishaps. At first, the occupant’s clothing was used as the hand drying implementation, but later on, a single towel was supplied for all patrons. When the beer flowed, the towel never dried, and this led to some unsanitary incidents. Paper sheets later appeared, but in all cases, the floor was 6″ deep in used paper towels that missed the garbage can. Later, a coiled cloth in a rotating dispenser allotted a fresh 2-foot square patch of clean, dry towel for wiping, but the complexity of loading this device usually meant that everyone was wiping on the last 4′ of saturated towel hanging down. This prompted an inventive individual to come up with the first forced-air hand dryer. With a rotating exhaust port to dry the face, it didn’t take long for the male clowns to use this as a directional launcher for spit. Enough of that! The discharge was now fixed in place, and the water blown off the hands now collected on the floor. Slip, slide, and sue pursued. After that came the wall hung box that you put your hands into. It was powered by a GE F110 turbo fan engine, the same one used in an F-16. With 30,000 pounds of thrust at 139 decibels, this hand dryer injected flour into the air steam to act as a drying agent. Did you ever notice that bar/restaurants that have these units installed in their bathrooms have sandwich wraps on their menus? I often wondered how they make those delicious(?) wraps? Unfurl one, and damn if it doesn’t look like a human hand.