Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
48. The first efforts in water purification probably occurred in China and India
several thousand years ago. It was common in China and Egypt to put alum in
water to clarify it. Sir Francis Bacon wrote about water purification experi-
ments, which were published one year after his death in 1627. The first known
illustrated description of sand filters was published by the Italian physician Luc
Antonio Porzio in 1685. For filtration history, see “Community Water Supply,” in
History of Public Works in the United States, 1776-1976,
ed. E.Armstrong et al. (Amer-
ican Public Works Association, 1976), 235, 236; M. N. Baker, “Sketch of the His-
tory of Water Treatment,”
Journal of the American Water Works Association
26 (1934),
July, 904, 905; Harold E. Babbitt and James J. Doland,
Water Supply Engineering
(McGraw-Hill, 1949), 4, 5; John W. Clark and Warren Viessman Jr.,
Water Supply and
Pollution Control
(International Textbook Co., 1965), 2-4; George W. Fuller,
“Progress in Water Purification,”
Journal of the American Water Works Association
25
(1933), October, 1566.
49. Cited in Baker, “Sketch of the History of Water Treatment,” 905.
50. Stein designed the first settling basin in the United States for Lynchburg in
1829. See “Community Water Supply,” 236; Baker,“Sketch of the History of Water
Treatment,” 906-908; George E. Symons, “History of Water Supply 1850 to Pres-
ent,”
Water and Sewage Works
100 (1953), May, 191; M. N. Baker,
The Quest for Pure
Water vol. I The History of Water Purification from the Earliest Records to the Twentieth
Century
(American Water Works Association, 1981; orig. pub. 1948), 127.
51. Baker, “Sketch of the History of Water Treatment,” 908-910. See also “Water
Purification—A Century of Progress,” 83; Baker,
Quest for Pure Water,
133, 135; City
of Cincinnati,Water Commission,
Report of the Commission to Take into Consideration
the Best Method of Obtaining an Abundant Supply of Pure Water
(1865), 3-9.
52. In 1878 Professor William Ripley Nichols studied water purification in Europe
for the Massachusetts State Board of Health. He published his findings on filtration
and related matters in a state report, and 5 years later expanded his observations in
a topic,
Water Supply.
See George C. Whipple, “Fifty Years of Water Purification,”
in Mazyck Ravenel,
A Half Century of Public Health
(American Public Health Asso-
ciation, 1921), 163.
53. See Baker,
The Quest for Pure Water,
148.
54. Baker, “Sketch of the History of Water Treatment,” 912-914; Baker,
The
Quest for Pure Water,
136-138.
55. See J. Leland FitzGerald, “Comparison of Water Supply Systems from a Fi-
nancial Point ofView,”
Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers
24 (1891),
April: 252-256.
