The surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands, by Samantha Subramanian, illustrated by Leon Edler. For a century, the humble paper towel has dominated public toilets. But a new generation of hand dryers has sparked a war for loo supremacy.

This article published as “The long read” in The Guardian today is balancing out information and historic facts very well. “As an invention, the paper towel isn’t much older than the hand dryer; the Scott Paper Company, based in Philadelphia and now owned by the tissue giant Kimberly-Clark, developed the first restroom towel in 1907, while the Airdry Corporation, in New York, patented the earliest “drying apparatus” in 1922.” The picture above shows the invention 1925 in Germany by Electrostar. Read the article as PDF