Toilet Paper Tech
Before there was A.I.
Okay, I saw this last night and it broke my brain. So I figured I’d share it with you…
So there is a meme about how an 1891 patent for toilet paper rolls with perforated sheets shows the “correct” way to orient a roll of toilet paper. This caused so much discussion that it hit various news outlets over the years.
Fair enough, but toilet paper roll orientation isn’t that interesting to me. But this is…
THERE WAS A PATENT FOR TOILET PAPER ROLLS!!!
Toilet paper used to be advanced enough technology that people had to invent it, patent it, patent improvements on it, and so on.
Toilet paper was at one time the frontier of advanced technology. Just like we think of AI, machine learning, and crypto now. 130 years ago, it was toilet paper.
That’s only 130 years ago!
If you had been born a few generations earlier, you might be thinking about toilet paper technology instead of code. Isn’t that crazy?
And here’s another thing…
Patents last in the US for twenty years. So for two decades if you wanted rolls of toilet paper with perforated tear away sheets, you had to license the patent!
Heck, for all I know there were arguments, lawsuits, and backstabbing business deals around… toilet paper. Just think for a moment about all the things that happen around big business, technology, and patents. And then realize all of that applied to toilet paper 130 years ago.
What’s even more bonkers is you might consider toilet paper to not be that big of a deal and hardly worthy of discussion as advanced technology in any form or fashion.
Well, the toilet paper market size is around $50 billion. And it’s still growing. It could reach $60-70 billion in the next ten years.
Toilet paper is a huge business. Built on top of 130 year old technology. Obviously there is manufacturing and processing around paper that’s changed along the way too.
It’s just wild to me that it wasn’t even that long ago that toilet paper was changing the world the way that the internet, iPhone, crypto, and AI changed things in the last 20-30 years.
We never think of toilet paper as technology (or something worth patenting), but it clearly is.
-Brian