Bath-tub

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     Thiis is from AMERICA IN SO MANY WORDS (1997):

_1870 bathtub_
     Mark Twain seems to have invented the bathtub.  Well, not the object
itself.  Baths, and wooden tubs for bathing, sometimes called _bathing tubs_,
had been around for centuries.  But Twain appears to be the first to join the
two one-syllable words _bath_ and _tub_.  In _Innocents Abroad_ (1869) he
wrote, "They were going to put all three of us in one bath-tub."  And in "A
Ghost Story" of 1870 he wrote, "I...was sorry that he was gone...and sorrier
still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath-tub."  By 1870,
then, we can say that the bathtub had been installed in our language.

     Mark Twain probably invented "bathtub" right after he got through
inventing "mountain climbing."  Yes, it's 1870 in the DICTIONARY OF
AMERICANISMS, but that's all wet!

BATHTUB

(Accessible Archives)  THE UPLAND UNION, 16 July 1851:  "...when he returned
he found his mother in the bathtub, with her head down."

BATH TUB

(Accessible Archives)  THE NATIONAL ERA, 6 November 1851:  "The bed is water
enclosed in an India rubber tick, which lines a box, in shape like a bath
tub."

((Making of America)  AMERICA AS I FOUND IT (1852) by Mary Grey Lundie
Duncan, pg. 329:  "In the centre of the room is fixed a circular bath-tub..."