Talk:Wallace Reyburn

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Was Crapper credited with the invention of the flush toilet? I understood that he manufactured them, and that his surname appeared inside the bowl. According to the myth, this was the origin of the verb to crap. I understand that in fact the word has a longer history than this story postulates.

I had forgotten Reyburn's name, but I thought that the inventor of the Titzling and Crapper myths also perpetrated a hoax (for a $10 bet) that Leonardo da Vinci had designed a flush toilet. He faked up a document, enlisted the connivance of a librarian (I think in New York's biggest library), and slipped it in with authentic da Vinci materials. The other party to the bet came looking for da Vinci material, found that this document "proved" the hoaxer's case, and duly handed over the money. I think the story was in Scientific American in the mid 1970s (possibly May 1975). Koro Neil (talk) 15:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)