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A pay toilet is a public toilet that requires money payment of any individual to use. It may be street furniture or be inside a building, e.g. a mall, department store, railway station, restaurant, etc. The reason for charging money for using toilets usually is for the maintenance of the equipment. Paying to use the toilet can be traced back almost 2000 years, to the first century AD. ==History== Some of the earliest documented pay toilets were built around 74 AD in Rome. The Roman Emperor of the time Titus Flavius Vespasianus created this method to ease the financial hardships, attained from the many wars that had been fought. This was not a popular choice with his people and he was ridiculed for the decision, to which he reacted with the famous quote 'Money does not smell'. The ancient Greco-Roman city of Ephesus played an important role in ancient times, becoming the trade centre and commercial hub of the ancient world.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.ephesus.us/ )〕 The Scholastica Baths were built in the 1st century and contained all of the modern amenities for hygiene, including advanced public toilets that had marble seats. To make use of these luxury conveniences, one had to pay a fee to enter, where they could enjoy the use of a pool, use the toilet or socialize.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ephesus-public-toilets )〕 John Nevil Maskelyne, an English stage magician, invented the first modern pay toilet in the late 19th century. His door lock for London toilets required the insertion of a penny coin to operate it, hence the euphemism to "spend a penny". The first pay toilet in the United States was installed in 1910 in Terre Haute, Indiana.〔Gruenstein, Peter (4 Sept 1975) (Pay toilet movement attacks capitalism ), ''The Beaver County Times'', Retrieved October 19, 2010 (with sarcastic subtitle for 1975, "How about charging air for tires?")〕 Pay toilets became especially common in Continental Europe. Paris, in particular, established many of them, and today the streets of the city are forested with self-cleaning coin operated booths (landmarks like Basilique du Sacré-Cœur generally have several). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pay toilet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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