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Comment by codezero | Hacker News Reader

Also interesting, mentioned in this article but not fully explained are Bathing Machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathing_machine

Essentially a carriage that sat in the water that you changed clothes in, sometime is to a provider outfit.

You climb in on one side on the beach and out the other into the water.

Amazing that social etiquette was so strong nobody asked "hey why don't we go right into the water?"

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some very interesting photos from way back then: http://www.whizzpast.com/photos-19th-century-bathing-machine...

Hang on, this definitely needs a NSFW warning. Some ankles were clearly visible.

Dang you... I spit up on my screen a bit~

In the city where i live , there were carriages that took you (the wealthy) to the water and back but if you were the Queen obviously you had your own personal mobile palace, powered with a steam motor: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_de_San_Sebasti%C3%A1n...

That's amazing. I'm surprised these don't exist as AirBnB rentals now :P

Interesting that early on people didn't wear bathing costumes and bathed naked. A Bathing Machine seems to be a good idea in that case, where you can enter and leave the water in full nakedness.

It seems that a hundred years later, people were also wearing costumes, and as this was right when the lower classes were flocking to the sea for their vacations, going into the sea straight from the beach, I imagine, and when the machines became stationary and then turned into beach huts (still reasonably common on many UK beaches)

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