Jewell water filter

Slow sand filters were introduced at a point when the nature of disease causing organisms in typhoid and cholera had been established.

Omar Jewell was a mechanical engineer who designed farm equipment and he took an interest in solving some of the problems involved in the filtration of water and established the O.H.Jewell Filter Company and was financed by Chicago-based waterwork dealers James B. Clow and Sons.

Omar's son William H. Jewell graduated in 1887 from the College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois and served as a chemist in the company.

[8][9][10] Jewell filters underwent further bacteriological tests in Alexandria and Berlin and their approval led to their wider adoption in numerous town water supplies in the early 1900s.

[6] The British troops at Alexandria brought down typhoid deaths to zero by 1905 with water treatments that included the use of Jewell filters.

[11] Jewell filters became commonplace in British Indian military towns in the plains after around 1910 and their construction had been standardized in engineering manuals.