Toilet paper was invented in China centuries ago, but Europe didn’t embrace it until disgust gave way in the 1800s.

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Toilet paper may feel like one of humanity’s most ordinary inventions, but its story is wildly inventive.

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Toilet paper may feel like one of humanity’s most ordinary inventions, but its story is wildly inventive. Ancient China was centuries ahead, rolling out early sheets for use while the Western world stuck to sharper or rougher methods—like corncobs, seashells, or even tufts of wool. For Europeans, it wasn’t until the 1800s, when growing cities demanded new rules of hygiene, that toilet paper began to lose its air of indulgent oddity and become a household staple. Behind this tale is a reminder that every ordinary ritual of cleanliness is the result of endless trials, clever improvisations, and civilization’s creative battle with biology.

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Toilet paper was invented in China centuries ago, but Europe didn’t embrace it until disgust gave way in the 1800s.

A closer look

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

Path to everyday miracles is littered with disasters you never hear about.

Wind-up radio engines, invented to spread communication in communities without electricity, were once hailed as revolutionary tools, but they quickly faded when commercial…

Before cell phones, people tried ‘pager watches’ in the 1980s—a wrist device that beeped specific messages.

In 19th-century Vienna, the first recorded automatic door was powered by a steam mechanism crafted for a royal greenhouse.

In 1826, a French inventor named Nicéphore Niépce produced what’s now considered the first photograph using a pewter plate coated in bitumen.

Arrival of the printing press spread books rapidly, but the first bestsellers weren’t grand literature—they were indulgences.

A bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.