Boonton Reservoir

Continuous chlorination, September 26, 1908 The quietest revolution on the list. Jersey City's new reservoir at Boonton was in court over whether its water was always pure, in a city where typhoid deaths had regularly topped 60 per 100,000 a year between 1880 and 1895. John Leal, a physician advising the water company, and engineer George W. Fuller spent 99 days secretly building a chlorine feed, without telling the city, and opened the valves on September 26, 1908. Chlorine had been used before mainly as an emergency measure; this was the first time a US city supply was treated continuously. The effect on typhoid was detectable within months, and within a few years most American municipal supplies were using chlorine.