This'll Blow You Away

Today in Tedium: if you've been reading us for a while, you might notice a common theme in the pieces we send out to you guys. Often, our strangest issues take things common (but mundane), and discover a secret history hiding under your nose. From belly buttons to bandages to veggie burgers, no subject is too mundane for us. If you use it, there's probably a great story as to how it got there. To prove it, we're reaching a new level of mundane with tonight's issue. We're going to talk about washing and drying your hands in public restrooms. We don't know if you've noticed, but the technology there has gotten pretty next-level. No, really. — Ernie @ Tedium

Hand dryers: racing against the clock

For decades, the greatest downfall the hand dryer was the fact that they were unbearably slow—unable to put forth the amount of warm energy needed to efficiently dry your hands in a few short seconds. It took nearly a minute to properly dry your hands, at which point you might as well have grabbed some paper towels anyway.

World Dryer, the primary company that created the devices prior to the 2000s, had the largest market share for nearly 50 years, but their devices failed to innovate quickly enough, and soon, their competition started to blow them away—literally.

In 1993, Japanese automaker Mitsubishi created a whole new dynamic for hand dryers, offering a hand-dip style of drying that blows water away from your hands rather than completely evaporating it. The Dyson Airblade, released in 2006, took this basic concept even further, though the similarities between the two brands have led to some close competition. (Fun fact: the Airblade's air isn't actually heated.)

But perhaps the mots impressive innovation in the hand-drying space came in 2002. That year, the manufacturer Excel Dryer released the Xlerator, which put a lot of hot air on your hands really freaking quickly, cutting down the drying time to just 10 to 15 seconds (and making a lot of noise in the process). The company's owners invested a massive amount of money in research and development on the device—to the point where they would have folded had it not succeeded—and it paid off as soon as they were able to get people to try the thing at tradeshows.

"Literally we'd have to coax people out of the aisles to come try our hand dryer," Excel Dryer owner Denis Gagnon told NPR in 2013. "So we'd get them up to the Xlerator and they'd put hands under, and you could see the expression in their face; there was a real wow factor to it."

The result is that Xlerators—which you might know as the devices which do this effect to your hands—have quickly taken over the market. In fact, they're actually kinda cocky about it. Upon the release of the Airblade in 2006, Excel director Simeon Barnes said he wasn't even concerned about the new competition.

"There appears to be nothing new or unique about this product and I do not believe it poses a serious threat to our business," Barnes told the BBC.

(That, however, didn't stop Excel Dryer from suing Dyson for false advertising back in 2012.)

The doctor who first advocated for proper hand sanitation died a laughingstock

Of course, we wouldn't have a need for all these hand dryers if we weren't actually washing our hands. (Though we imagine some of you aren't, and if that's the case, uh, gross.)

But the sad part about this whole hand-washing affair is that the guy who made the case for proper hand sanitation didn't even earn proper respect for it while he was still alive.

Now, to be fair, Ignaz Semmelweis was kind of a jerk who was famous for a certain level of arrogance. But that doesn't mean Semmelweis was wrong about the necessity of washing one's hands to stop the spread of germs.

Here's the story: Semmelweis, a Hungarian obstetrician, was trying to figure out why the maternal death rate was so much worse for the mothers of babies born in hospitals than it was for those who used midwives. Eventually, he figured out that something might be up with the way that doctors handled their patients.

He didn't know exactly why—while he had an understanding of the basic issues, he used the phrase "morbid poison" to explain what was happening. (It was the spread of Group A hemolytic streptococcus, just an FYI.) Eventually, he figured out that the issue had something to do with the autopsies that medical students were doing on the deceased—just before they were to assist mothers entering the hospital.

Soon, he had the students wash their hands with a chlorine-lime solution before they worked on other patients. And soon enough, the maternal death rates at the hospital dropped.

However, Semmelweis' methods may have shown results, but they proved controversial within the medical community, especially in Vienna, where many doctors considered his theories nonsense—despite the fact that he clearly followed the scientific method. Part of the problem might have been the implication that doctors were unknowingly putting young mothers at risk.

Plus, on top of all that, he refused to actually share his research with the world because he considered the results so obvious. It took him 13 years to finally publish The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, a document which reads as the best told-ya-so document in medical history.

"Since the chlorine washings were instituted with such dramatic success, not even the smallest additional changes in the procedures of the first clinic were adopted to which the decline in mortality could be even partially attributed," he wrote.

Despite his research, Semmelweis died without the respect of the larger medical community—and in an even greater indignity, he died from an infection caused by the very disease he was fighting against.

If he had only made it a couple more decades, he would've known the truth: He was totally right.