THE PEARL-BUTTON MAKER'S CONTRIVANCE. THE MODERN FIRE-ENGINE.
How to force a continuous stream of water on the fire!
That was the problem which puzzled an unknown inventor about the year
1675. He probably saw that hitherto the appliances for extinguishing
conflagrations failed at this point, and we may suppose that he
cudgelled his brains to hit upon the right remedy.
Then one day, no one seems to know when, he thought of inventing, or
adapting, the compressed air-chamber to a sort of portable pump, and,
behold!--
The Modern Fire-Engine was born!
The invention was introduced, probably, after the Great Fire, because
authorities describe it as first mentioned in the French _Journal des
Savans_ in 1675, and Perrault states that an engine with an air-chamber
was kept at Paris for the protection of the Royal Library in 1684. If,
therefore, Hero knew of the air-chamber, as some assert, it does not
appear to have been much used. But probably the great disaster in London
stirred invention, and the addition of the air-chamber was the result.
It may not, however, have been a distinct invention, for an air-chamber
had been found of great value in various hydraulic machines.
What, then, is this invention, and what is its great value to a
fire-engine?
Briefly, it enables a steady and continuous stream of water to be thrown
on a fire. It is the vital principle of the modern fire-engine, and
renders it distinctly different from all squirts, syringes, and portable
pumps preceding it. Instead of an unequal and intermittent supply,
sometimes, no doubt, falling far short of the fire, we have now a
persistent stream, which can be continuously directed to any point, in
reach, with precision and efficiency.
How, then, are these results obtained? How does the air-chamber work?
It depends on the elasticity and power of compressed air. The water,
when drawn from the source of supply by two pistons, working
alternately, is driven into a strong chamber filled with air. The air
becomes compressed, and is driven to one part of the chamber; but when
it is forced back to occupy about one-third of the whole space, the air
is so compressed that, like the proverbial worm which will turn at last,
it exerts a pressure on the water which had been driving it back. If the
water had no means of escape, the chamber would soon burst; but the
water finds its way through the delivery-hose. If the hose issue from
the top of the chamber, it is fitted with a connecting pipe reaching
nearly to the bottom to prevent any escape of air.
Now, as long as the pumps force the water into the air-chamber to the
necessary level--that is, to about two-thirds of the space--the pressure
is practically continuous, and thus a constant jet of water is
maintained through the hose. The ordinary pressure of air is about 14·7
pounds per square inch; and when compressed to one-half its usual bulk,
its elasticity or power of pressure is doubled, and of course is
rendered greater if still further compressed.
This power, then, of the compressibility and elasticity of air is the
secret of the fire-engine air-chamber; but though introduced about 1675,
it was not until 1720 that such engines seem to have become more
general. About that date, Leupold built engines in Germany with a
strongly-soldered copper chest, and one piston and cylinder, the machine
throwing a continuous and steady jet of water some twenty or thirty feet
high.
In the meantime, what was being done in England?
Here again the story is obscure; but we imagine the course of events to
have been something like this:
In the dismal days after the Great Fire, people began to cast about for
means to prevent a recurrence of so widespread and terrible a calamity.
Fire-insurance offices were organized, and they undertook the
extinguishment of fires. It is not unreasonable to suppose that in some
form--perhaps by offering prizes, perhaps by simply calling attention to
the need for improvement, perhaps by disseminating information such as
of the engine mentioned by Perrault at Paris--these offices stimulated
invention; perhaps the memory of the Great Fire was enough to stir
ingenious effort without their aid.
Now, there was a pearl-button maker named Newsham, at Cloth Fair, not
far distant from Pye Corner, who obtained patents for improvements in
fire-engines in 1721, and again in 1725; while the _Daily Journal_ of
April 7th, 1726, gives a report of one of his engines which discharged
water as high as the grasshopper on the Royal Exchange. This apparently
was not only due to the great compression of air in the air-chamber, but
also to the peculiar shape he gave to the nozzle of the jet; and it is
said he was able to throw water to a height of a hundred and thirty feet
or more.
In France a man named Perier seems to have been busy with fire-engines,
though how far he worked independently of others we cannot tell.
The hose and suction-pipe are said to have been invented by two men
named Van der Hide, inspectors of fire-extinguishing machines at
Amsterdam about 1670. The hose was of leather, and enabled the water to
be discharged close to the fire. It is worthy of note that this
invention also appears to have been after the Great Fire of London.
Remembering, therefore, that Newsham was probably indebted to others
for the important air-chamber and flexible leathern hose--though how far
he was indebted we cannot say--we must regard him as the Father of the
Modern Fire-Engine in England. Especially so, as his improvements have
been regarded as in advance of all others in their variety and value. It
is also worthy of note that the first fire-engines in the United States
were of his construction.
Little is known of Newsham's life. The reasons leading him, a maker of
pearl buttons, to turn his attention to fire-engine improvement are not
clear. At his death in 1743, the undertaking passed by bequest to his
son. The son died about a year after his father, and the business then
came into the hands of his wife and cousin George Ragg, also by bequest;
and the name of the firm became Newsham & Ragg.
One of Newsham's engines may be seen in the South Kensington Museum
to-day, having been presented to that institution by the corporation of
Dartmouth. The pump-barrels will be found to measure 4½ inches in
diameter, with a piston-stroke of 8½ inches. The original instructions
are still attached, and are protected by a piece of horn.
The general construction of Newsham's engines appears to have been
something like this:
The body, which was long and narrow, measured about 9 feet by 3 feet
broad; this shape enabled it to be wheeled in narrow streets, and even
through doorways. Along the lower part of the body, which was swung on
wheels, ran a pipe of metal, which the water entered from a feed-pipe.
The feed-pipe was intended to be connected with a source of supply; but
if this failed, a cistern, attached to the body of the engine, could be
filled by buckets, while a strainer was placed at the junction between
the cistern and the interior pipe to prevent dirt or gravel from
entering it.
[Illustration: EARLY MANUAL FIRE-ENGINE.]
On the top of the body was built a superstructure, which looked like a
high box--greater in height than in breadth, and larger at the top than
at the bottom. This box contained the all-important air-chamber and the
pumps. The water in the interior pipe was forced into the air-chamber by
the two pumps, and then thrown on the fire through a pipe connected with
a hose of leather projecting from the top of the air-chamber. This pipe
descended within the chamber almost to the bottom, so that when water
was pumped into the air-chamber it flowed round the bottom of the pipe,
and prevented any ingress or egress of air. As the water rose, the air
already in the chamber became compressed in the top part of the chamber,
and in turn exerted its power on the water.
The pumps were worked by levers, one on each side of the engine, and
alternately raised and lowered by the men operating the machine; while
this manual-power was much increased by one or two men working treadles
connected with the levers, and throwing the weight of the body on each
treadle alternately.
The principle of the force-pump may be thus briefly explained:
When a tight-fitting piston working in a cylinder is drawn upward, the
air in the cylinder is drawn up also, and a partial vacuum created; if
the cylinder is connected with water not too far distant by a pipe, the
water will then rush upward to fill the vacuum. Then, if the bottom of
the cylinder be fitted with a valve opening upward only, it is closed
when the piston is pushed down again; and the water would burst the
cylinder, if enough power were applied to the piston, but escape is
afforded along another pipe as an outlet, which in the case of the
fire-engine opens into the air-chamber, and which is opened and closed
by another valve. Thus is the water not only raised from the source of
supply, but is forced along another channel.
And the modern fire-engine--which we date from Newsham's engines in
England about 1726--is a combination of the principles of the force-pump
and of the air-chamber, which acts by reason of the great elasticity of
compressed air.
Other inventors made improvements as well as Newsham, namely, Dickenson,
Bramah, Furst, Rowntree, and others, though the differences were chiefly
in details. An engraving mentioned in an old work of reference sets
forth that a London merchant named John Lofting was the patentee and
inventor of the fire-engine. His invention must have been since the
Great Fire, because the Monument is depicted in one corner of the
engraving and the Royal Exchange in another. Rowntree made an engine for
the Sun and some other fire-offices, which protected the feed-pipe more
efficiently from mud and gravel; and Bramah devised a hemispherical
perforated nozzle, which distributed water in all directions, so that
the ceilings, sides, and floor of a room would become equally drenched.
Bramah also applied the rotary principle to the fire-engine. He studied
the principles of hydraulics, and introduced many improvements into
machinery for pumping, a rotary principle being one of them. He attained
this object by changing the form of the cylinder and piston, the part
acting directly on the water being shaped as a "slider," and working
round a cavity in form of a cylinder, and maintained in its place by a
groove. He applied the rotative principle to many objects, one being the
fire-engine. His fire-engine was patented in 1793; but we cannot
discover that it changed any vital principle of the machine, which, as
we have seen, consists in essence of a movable force-pump, steadied and
strengthened by a compressed air-chamber and a flexible delivery-hose.
Joseph Bramah, however, is doubtless best known to fame as the inventor
of the hydraulic press, though he is also celebrated for the safety-lock
which bears his name. He was a farmer's son, and was born at
Stainborough in Yorkshire in 1748; but an accident rendering him lame,
he was apprenticed to a carpenter. Engaging in business as a
cabinet-maker in London, he was employed one day to fit up some sanitary
appliances, and their imperfections led him to devise improvements. He
took out his first patent in 1778 and this contrivance proved to be the
first of a long series. His lock followed, and then, assisted in one
detail by Henry Maudslay, he introduced his hydraulic press, a machine
which he foresaw was capable of immense development.
Several of his improvements are concerned with water, such as
contrivances connected with pumps and fire-engines, and with building
boilers for steam-engines. It is also said he was one of the first
proposers of the screw-propeller for steamships. Altogether, he was the
author of eighteen patents; though it has been pointed out that he
improved and applied the inventions of others, rather than originated
the whole thing himself. While he contributed improvements to the
fire-engine, the vital principle of the air-chamber and the flexible
hose remained the same. Up to about the year 1832, the larger engines
generally in use in London seem to have thrown some eighty-eight gallons
a minute from fifty to seventy feet high.
The next notable development was the application of steam to work the
force-pumps. But this addition, which was made about 1830 by John
Braithwaite, also did not alter the principle of the air-chamber.
John Braithwaite came of an engineering family. He was born in 1797, the
third son of John Braithwaite, the constructor of one of the first
diving-bells. The ancestors of the Braithwaites had conducted an
engineer's business, or something analogous to it, at St. Albans ever
since the year 1695.
The younger John entered his father's business, and from 1823, after his
father and brother died, conducted it alone. Those were the days when
steam was coming into vogue, and he began to manufacture high-pressure
steam-engines. Together with Ericsson, he constructed the "Novelty," the
locomotive which competed in the famous railway-engine contest at
Rainhill in 1829, when Stephenson's "Rocket" won the prize.
Braithwaite's engine, though it did not fulfil all the conditions of the
competition, yet is said by some to have been the first locomotive to
run a mile a minute--or rather more, for it is held to have covered a
mile in fifty-six seconds. He used a bellows to fan the fire; and in his
steam fire-engine, he also employed bellows, though on one day of the
Rainhill contest the failure of the bellows rendered the locomotive
incapable of doing work.
In the fire-engine, the bellows were worked by the wheels of the
machine, and eighteen or twenty minutes were required to raise the
steam. At the present time, a hundred pounds of steam can be raised in
five minutes in the biggest engine of the London Brigade, this result
being due, in one respect at least, to the use of water-tube boilers.
Braithwaite's engine of 1830 was fitted with an upright boiler, and was
of scarcely six horse-power; but, nevertheless, it forced about fifteen
gallons of water per minute from eighty to ninety feet high. The pistons
for the steam and water respectively were on opposite ends of the same
rod, that for steam being 7 inches in diameter, and for the water 6½
inches, and both having a stroke of 16 inches.
The engine was successful in its day. During an hour's work, it would
throw between thirty and forty tons of water on a fire; while another
engine, also made by Braithwaite, threw the larger quantity of ninety
tons an hour.
The steam fire-engine was first used at the burning of the Argyle Rooms
in London in 1830; it was also used at the fire of the English
Opera-House in the same year, and at the great fire at the Houses of
Parliament in 1834. But, curiously enough, a great prejudice existed
against it, and the engine was at length destroyed by a London mob. The
fire-brigade were also against it. So Braithwaite gave it up; but he
built a few others, one at least being for Berlin, where it seems to
have given great satisfaction.
Braithwaite, who became engineer-in-chief to the Eastern Counties
Railway, also applied steam to a floating fire-engine, and constructed
the machinery so that the power could be rapidly changed from propelling
the vessel to operating the pumps.
The brigade could not long disregard the use of steam. In 1852, their
manual-float was altered to a steamer, the alterations being made by
Messrs. Shand & Mason. Six years later, the firm made a land steam
fire-engine, which, however, was sent to St. Petersburg; and then in
1860--thirty years after Braithwaite had introduced the machine--the
London Brigade hired one for a year. The experiment was successful, and
a steam fire-engine was purchased from the same makers. But only two
steam fire-engines were at work at the great Tooley Street fire.
Then, in July, 1863, a steam fire-engine competition took place at the
Crystal Palace, the trials lasting three days. Lord Sutherland was
chairman, and Captain Shaw, who was then chief of the London Brigade,
was honorary secretary of the competition committee. In the result,
Merryweather & Son won the first prize in the large-class engine, and
Shand & Mason the second prize. Shand & Mason also took the first prize
in the small class, and Lee & Co. the second prize in the small class.
The value of the steam fire-engine was fully established.
At the present time, Messrs. Shand & Mason have an engine capable of
throwing a thousand gallons a minute; while one of the water-floats of
the London Brigade will throw thirteen hundred and fifty gallons a
minute. These powerful machines form a striking development of Newsham's
engine of 1726, and afford a remarkable contrast to the old
fire-quenching appliances of former times.
But while the development of the modern fire-engine had been proceeding,
a not less remarkable organization of firemen had been growing. It arose
in a very singular, and yet under the circumstances a not unnatural,
manner. And to this part of the story we must now turn our attention.