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I can't find link now, but prior to the first graduation towers some salines would have workers toss the brine against rough walls, to provide evaporation surface.
The first graduation towers would use straw, but this would rot and foul the brine. The technology matured over a few decades. Graduation towers needed (wind powered) pumps & a large investment up front.
Upvote:2
A historically important method of producing salt is the open pan method (or variations on this theme). A salty solution called brine is placed in an open pan, and the pan was evaporated until the salt fell out.
The graduation tower came into use about the 16th century as a means of effecting this evaporation. This made it easier to collect the salt after it evaporated. But before the tower was used to accelerate this process, one could use heat or even "natural" evaporation to effect the necessary evaporation.