Anyone know when the watertower was invented?

I've only been able to trace water towers back to the second half of the 19th century. But it's got to be older than that. Any ideas?

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I've only been able to trace water towers back to the second half of the 19th century. But it's got to be older than that. Any ideas?
Sorry, I'm unable to help but I would suspect, given the limitations of pumping equipment, late 1700s is probably about the earliest substantial water towers would go.
 
Water towers as major architecture indeed do not go back further than the mid-19th century, when pressurised water pipe networks came into use. The system was familiar much earlier, and we find something like a (comparatively small) water tower in the pumping system that supplied Versailles' fountains. Similar designs were also familiar to the Romans, but again, they were not commonly used because Roman water supply systems were not designed to operate under pressure or move water up. The closest thing to it was the aqueduct 'lock', a distribution tank that was designed to have an outflow higher than the network it fed. But its main purpose was to create a steady flow, filter out sediment and ensure that public fountains and baths received privileged supply over private residences, not to produce water pressure.
 
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