Schmiedt GmbH here claims reduced splashing as well as the possibility of inspection in the shallow-flush design, but that it is smelly and hard to clean. Deep-flush minimizes odor but is susceptible to splashback. The Cascade design (that is what we are talking about) is supposed to combine both.
Pfau GmbH also describes it as an attempt to combine the advantages of the deep-flush (odor control) and shallow-flush (splash control and possibility of inspection) into one.
My favorite example of engineering philosophy is the NASA example. The Mercury capsule people decided they needed to be able to write notations while in zero gravity – so they spent 10’s of thousands on a ball point pen design that would do this. The Russians facing the same problem simply used pencils. This is what I’ve heard - not positive it’s true!
The rest of that story is that pencils generate conductive carbon dust which can float into electrical / electronic stuff in zero G and cause problems. Problems NASA obsessed about that the Russians simply ignored. Who had the right attitude? Darn good question I’m not prepared to answer.
Sorry to have to “debunk” this one, as it’s been going around a lot lately. It’s actually an example of NASA doing something right: 1. Pressurized pen works great in zero-gee; 2. No worries about conductive pencil graphite, and 3. NASA did not spend money to have it developed, it was the Fisher Pen company who spent their own money on it.
Thanks for clearing it up – but it makes a good story!
Og, I’m so sick of debunking the space pen thing. I’ve been setting people straight on that for years, but it always seems to resurface. Very tenacious bit of misinformation.
Thank you! It seems to be more French, than European, which is probably why I haven’t seen it much, maybe never. Haven’t been in France in the last 5 years, but I’ve been in many other countries.
In Switzerland, most toliets are wall-mounted. Normally uses gasket instead of wax rings.
Floating broken bins can’t be a good thing either,