Bathing in a tub was cumbersome, so those who could bathed under waterfalls.
These were the first showers used by man.
The ancient Greeks had indoor showers at gymnasiums which they installed through advances in aqueducts and plumbing.
Jets of cold water cascaded from the ceiling while bathers stood under it.
While public baths fell out of use in Mediaeval times, contrary to popular belief, sanitation did not.
What was lost was the sophisticated water and sewage systems developed by the Greeks and the Romans.
People went back to bathing in wooden tubs.
A communal bath in ancient Greece with men standing under two water spouts shaped like panthers' heads.
But bathing was a slow process.
It involved a lot of labor.
An English stove and heater manufacturer named William Feetham decided to speed things up.
He created and patented the worlds first mechanical shower.
His contraption consisted of a basin, where the bather stood, and an overhanging water tank.
The process was then repeated.
Nevertheless, Feethams shower was the best people had for more than a century.
A maid filling a Feetham-like mechanical bath for her master.
An actual Feetham bath has a hand-operated pump.
Showering was popularized in the mid-19th century by a French doctor Merry Delabost.
He also guided the installation of showers in the barracks of the French army in the 1870s.
Meanwhile, development in water heater meant that people no longer had to shower in the cold.
Indoor plumbing had improved by then allowing free-standing showers to be connected to running water source.
Evenmiddle class homesbegan to have hot running water.
Instead, water was heated using hot gases generated by a burner.
Unfortunately, Maughan forgot to add a ventilation causing the burner to sometimes explode.
Although Maughans invention failed, the name he coined stuck.
Edwin Ruud standing besides the water heater he invented.
On the right is a diagram showing the innards of a Ruud instantaneous water heater.
