IMPROVED TRAVELLING WATERCLOSET."
Year: 1877

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Etienno Pitrat at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 1st June 1877.
ETIENNE PITRAT, of Boulevard de Strasbourg, 59, Paris, Gentleman.
IMPROVED TRAVELLING WATERCLOSET."
" AN
The object of my Invention is to construct a travelling watercloset for use at fairs,
races, and other places where a great number of people meet.
My watercloset is a carriage or vehicle, by preference of sheet iron, mounted on
wheels and drawn by horses. It is entered at the rear where there is a platform or
foot board, and the entrance admits to a longitudinal passage, at each side of which
are several closets; cach closet has a sliding door and is furnished with a proper
seat. At the front end of the passage is a wash basin. The excreta are received in
movable vessels, and may be emptied out wherever convenient, and may be used as
imanure. On the roof of the vehicle is a water reservoir to supply the closets. At
each side of the vehicle near the top is a transparent slab or facia bearing words
indicating the nature of the vehicle, and these slabs may be made luminous at night
by lights and reflectors within the vehicle. The remainder of the body of the
vehicle, both inside and out, may be utilized for advertisements. Counters or
recorders of the number of persons who enter the vehicle may be fitted at the rear or
elsewhere, and a hood may be fixed to protect the attendant on the platform from
sun or rain.
I prefer to construct the closets in the vehicle in a special manner, as about to be
described. The basin fixed below the seat is closed at its lower part by a valve which
turns on a vertical axis; this valve is fitted at the upper part of a cylindrical box which
is closed at the bottom by a similar valve; these two valves are formed with small
holes for the purpose of allowing the liquid matter to separate from the solid. The
bottom of the box is on a level with the floor. When the basin has to be emptied,
the upper valve is operated by means of a handle mounted on its axis. On this axis
is fixed a circular or curved clastic piece of steel which moves at the same time as the
valve on a curved slide. When the valve is open the elastic piece is engaged in a
notch in the slide, so that by moving back the handle the elastic piece draws the
slide with it; this slide being mounted on the saune axis as the lower valve, the
Pin 9.71

page_text: latter will open and allow the matter in the box to fall out into a receiver or vessel
below. By continuing the return movement of the handle, the elastic piece by
sliding on an inclined guide, rises and escapes from the notch in the slide.
A spring acting on the lower valve then causes this valve to return quickly to
its original position and close the box. At the side of the box is a tube leading
from an upper box in which is a supply of deodorizing or disinfecting powder. In
order to introduce a given quantity of powder into the box every time, I fit on the
axis of the handle before described a tappet which when the upper valve is opened
strikes and lifts a lever. This lever has its fulcrum at its middle, and is jointed at
each end to a plate or shutter which works through a transverse slot in the tube, the
lower plate being in position in the tube and the upper plate out. The lifting of
the lever moves the lower plate out and the upper plate in, so that the powder which
was contained in the space between them falls into the box with the excreta, which
the opening of the upper valve has perinitted to descend.. When the handle is
moved back, a spring returns the lever to its original position, and the lower valve
then opens-and-allows the excreta mixed with the powder to fall-into-the-receiver-
or vessel below.