oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
Bronco..as rough as sandpaper to irritate your piles and non-absorbent too...what was that all about?!?
Before Bronco there was torn-up newspapers. But back in the 1950s and before all toilet paper was like Bronco - hard and unforgiving. At school our toilet paper was printed with the name '[blank] County Council Education'. Toilets in public buildings and government offices had hard toilet paper printed 'Government Property' to stop people stealing it.
An aside: During WW2 in the Mediterranean a British submarine hit a mine that caused damage and flooding to a single compartment. The submarine was able to continue its mission to the scheduled end but the damage had destroyed ALL the toilet paper on board because it was all stored in that compartment.
During the rest of the mission the crew used any available paper. When they returned to port they didn't have a requisition form to order more toilet paper, nor a form to order more forms to order toilet paper - a Catch 22 dilemma. A neighbouring warship lent them a form to order more forms and the dilemma was solved.
BUT that incident led to a change for stowing stores on ALL British warships. No longer would all stock of any item be in a single place. They would be evenly distributed about the ship so that damage in one area wouldn't destroy ALL of something. It meant more complexity for the poor storekeepers, but an ability to continue to operate when damaged. After all, toilet paper can be replaced by any paper. Radio spares cannot be replaced except by radio spares.
Eventually all on-shore storage of war materials changed too so that one bombing raid couldn't destroy the total stocks of any item - all because one submarine's crew lost their toilet paper.