Swimming Pools - Their History Revealed

Did you know that the first mention of heated swimming pools was in ancient Rome? It was actually built up on pillars and contained a chamber underneath it where a slave had to stay busy stoking the fires that heated the bottom of the pool. It makes you really appreciate todays modern pool heaters, doesn't it?

What Took Swimming Pools So Long to Catch On?

Anyway, one would think that from there on, pools would have taken off in popularity but that just didn't happen. You see there were actually a number of obstacles that got in the way of pool ownership as we know it. Obstacles that existed up until relatively recent times.

Digging By Hand Was No Fun Back Then

Of course before the advent of modern mechanical diggers, the task of excavating a pool was left up to men with picks and hand shovels. This alone kept the cost prohibitively high, such that back then only the very wealthy could afford them. But that wasn't the big problem.

The Proper Attire for Swimming

The real problem that kept people from using swimming pools until really this past century was puritanical social codes that made swimming in general just too damn difficult. To start with, back in the 1800s swimming suits had to completely cover most of a mans body.

Hey! - You Can't Swim That Way!!

For women it was even worse because the swimming clothes they had to wear left pretty much no skin exposed. On top of that, a person had to be very careful how they swam. You see, the modern day �free style crawl� that we all do was explicitly banned for being too �rough� and �impolite�.

Hey! - Look How Those Indians Are Swimming!

People could only do the breast stroke and they had to only kick sideways. So then what changed all that? Believe it or not, it was the first settlers who crossed the Atlantic to the New World that initiated the change. They learned to swim the standard free style crawl from those �crazy savages� and took it back to England

Have you ever stopped to consider the history of swimming pools? After all, it's only in the past 50 or so years that the technology to build and maintain them became truly affordable, which in turn has led to a veritable explosion in their popularity. But what about before then.

Would you believe the that very first mention of swimming pools has them being built by the ancient Romans, somewhere around 2500B.C. Also you can credit the Romans with building the first heated swimming pool as well. It was built on raised pillars and had slaves stoking fires under it to heat the water.

However; it wasn't until around the middle of the 19th century when it was recorded that six swimming pools with diving boards were built and filled in London. Even then, strict puritanical codes kept a damper on swimming in general. For instance, people were expected to swim fully clothed and men and women swimming together was very much frowned upon.

It goes much further then that because back then there were �polite� modes of swimming and ways of swimming that could get you kicked out of the pool and labeled a rogue. For instance, the standard free style crawl that's the first style of swimming that everyone learns as kids was pretty much banned for being too �rough� and causing too much splashing.

In Europe back then it was the breast stroke that was accepted in swimming pools but across the Atlantic things were about to change. It was the original colonialists who observed the Native Americans diving off of rocks and doing the free style standard crawl that was the first �decadent� seeds of change. Far away from polite society, these first Americans finally were able to �cut loose� and swim how they pleased.