14 DAY TRIAL // Kim Kardashian's exposed, vulnerable and seriously oversized (by some people's standards, that is) derrière failed to do the trick, but today's revelation just might. Do what? Well, break the Internet and plunge the world into chaos, of course.
As it turns out, folks claiming that the correct way to use toilet paper is to place the rolls with their end on the outside, i.e. in the so-called over position, had it right all along. So says a 1891 patent bearing the name of New York businessman Seth Wheeler.
And why should we trust this Seth Wheeler guy?
You might not have heard of him prior to this historical day, but the fact of the matter is that Seth Wheeler forever changed our little world. Thus, it was he who came up with the idea to divide toilet paper sheets with the help of teeny tiny perforations arranged in a perfect line.
“My invention consists of a roll of connected sheets of paper for toilet use, said roll having incisions at intervals extending from the side of the web toward the center, but not meeting, and terminating in an angular out,” reads the patent for his invention.
The New York businessman was merely looking to make life easier for fellow loo-goers when he came up with his new toilet paper roll design. The over vs. under debate was not even a thing back in the 1890s. Still, the drawing accompanying his patent request inadvertently settles it.
The drawing, available below, clearly shows that, in order for the perforations in toilet paper to do their job and help us effectively separate one sheet from the one after it, the end of a toilet paper roll must be on the outside. Take that, all ye who say toilet paper rolls must have their end on the inside!
How come we had no idea this patent even existed?
Let's face it, it's not like we spend every waking hour thinking about toilet paper. We turn to it whenever circumstances demand for it and we could not possibly imagine our lives without it, but we forget all about it the moment we leave our bathrooms.
It was a writer named Owen Williams who, this past Monday, posted a photo of Seth Wheeler's drawing on Twitter and showed to the world how toilet papers should be used. “The patent for toilet paper should settle the over vs under debate,” he captioned the photo.
