Ever hear of the English Regency Shower ? No one knows who invented this bathing device, but it was created in the early 19th century, sometime around 1810, and was originally over ten feet tall and built out of metal pipes that were painted to look like bamboo. The top of the unit was a basin, connected to pipes. Water was then pumped through a nozzle and over the user’s shoulder before then being collected and pumped back into the basin, ready to be used again — a recyclable showering of a kind that would make anyone today hesitate to step inside the stall.

The prototype of this shower went through a number of renovations, including hand pumped models, sprayer models, and models with interchangeable nozzles. Indoor plumbing that people could rely upon arose around 1850, and that made possible free-standing showers with a running water source, making them easier to use, as the water no longer was re-collected until the user bathed in water that three or four others used to clean themselves.

This shower was the end of a long non-showering period in the history of bathing. Showers became available to people because of the aqueducts and sewage systems of the ancient Greeks, but then took a break after the fall of the Roman Empire, not really arising again until the Victorian Age.

Today, the shower seems here to stay, with a variety of forms, not just shower stalls, but steam showers , and units personally designed for the individual homes, allowing the residents of the house to truly have a place in which, thankfully, they may relax without using any one else’s bath water.