Lawn Sprinklers

This afternoon I watched an episode of The Artful Detective, the Canadian mystery series mentioned in a post several weeks ago.  This show is set in Toronto about 1898.  Victoria is on her throne.  Canada is knee deep in prudish Victorian culture, which is often observed in the breach.  Detective William Murdock of the Toronto Constabulary is "artful" because he constantly invents novel devices and processes to help solve his cases, such as the lie detector, sonar, and "finger marks".

As he tracks down the murderer in today's episode, Murdock and his boss end up at a church where the lawn sprinklers give the two cops a sudden, unexpected soaking.  I can suspend disbelief about sonar and late 19th century "finger marks."  But lawn sprinklers?  Isn't this a leap too far?... an outrageous anachronism?

The familiar lawn sprinkler.  (Wikimedia photo)

So I thought until I googled lawn sprinklers.  It appears that the lawn sprinkler as we know it was invented by one J. Lessler of Buffalo, New York, and patented (#121949) in 1871.  Other patents for water-driven oscillating sprinklers soon followed.

Sprinklers developed in response to growing homeowner interest in having a lawn, just like the toffs behind their ornate wrought iron fences.  Lawns as we know them originated in France in the 1700s, spread to England and, in time, crossed the Pond to the New World.  They remained a upper class affectation until municipal water systems, hoses, nozzles, and sprinklers made it possible to provide the water a lawn demands.  Apparently sprinklers were all the rage at the end of the 19th century, just as portrayed by The Artful Detective.

What this delightful detective show doesn't describe is the hard times that lawn sprinklers face in our own day as many towns in arid regions restrict lawn watering.  Using scarce water resources to maintain lawns in the desert communities of the Southwest is truly prodigal. •••