Progress in Water Purification

Substantial progress in water purification dates from 1829 when the Chelsea Water Company in London put in service a slow sand filter plant designed by Simpson. At that date there was nothing definitely known about the germ theory of disease or the transmission of disease by water. Filtration was then aimed to correct the objectionable appearance of turbid water which was considered undesirable in the arts and manufactures and certainly no attention was given to its value as regards health. Progress was slow until a severe epidemic of Asiatic cholera occurred in 1849 when public health authorities first announced that drinking water was the chief means of transmission of this disease through pollution coming from those sick of cholera. An Act of Parliament in 1852 made compulsory the filtration of all river water supplied the Metropolitan District of London after December 31, 1855. On this side of the Atlantic little consideration was given to filtration prior to December, 1865, when the St. Louis Water Department instructed its Chief Engineer, James P. Kirkwood, to examine into the various means of filtration as practised in Europe and to make recommendations for the needs of St. Louis. The Kirkwood report on filtration was a classic. It was published in 1869, was translated into German in 1876, and for a quarter of a century was the leading guide on filtration practice through the descriptions it gave of the construction and operation of representative slow sand filters and filtration galleries then found in Europe. For convenience I shall divide the period following the early Kirkwood activities in this field in this country into four periods, each of about 15 years or a little longer in duration, as follows: