The invention of pumps I shall leave to those who undertake to write
the history of hydraulics, and here only remark that, on the testimony
of Vitruvius[582], it is in general ascribed to Ctesibius, on which
account they are called _machinæ Ctesibicæ_; and that Ctesibius
lived at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy
Euergetes I., consequently two centuries before the Christian æra. My
present object extends no further than to state what I know in regard
to the question, At what time were these machines first employed for
extinguishing fires?
For this purpose, however, it was necessary that the pump-work employed
at first only for raising water should undergo some alteration. To use
it for extinguishing fires, it was requisite that the water should be
speedily driven from the upper aperture as high as possible; whereas
for the first purpose, it is enough if the water be thrown out in
sufficient quantity to be conveyed to the place of its destination.
More additional parts necessary for extinguishing fires would then be
an imperfection; as the power which gives the water a needless velocity
might be employed with more advantage to raise a greater quantity of it.
In my opinion it is highly probable that Ctesibius had an idea
of converting his pump into a fire-engine, for his scholar, Hero
of Alexandria, speaks expressly of this use, and describes the
construction of a forcing-pump with two cylinders[583]; but it is very
doubtful whether this application of it soon became general, and
whether this advantageous machine was known to the ancient Romans. What
I have been able to learn on the subject is as follows.
Pliny the younger, after telling the emperor Trajan, in one of his
letters, that the town of Nicomedia in Bithynia had been almost
entirely destroyed by a fire, adds, that the devastation had been
increased by a violent storm which took place at the time; by the
laziness of the inhabitants, and by the want of machines or apparatus
proper for extinguishing the flames[584]. The word _sipho_, which the
author here uses, was certainly the fire-engine of Ctesibius; though
some under this term understand only aqueducts, canals, and pipes for
distributing water throughout the city. I will not deny that this word
may have signified such pipes, particularly on account of a passage
in Strabo[585], where he speaks of the subterranean conduits of Rome,
and says that almost all the houses had cisterns, _siphones_, or
water-pipes, and running streams. But Pliny at the same time mentions
water-buckets, which may be considered as an appendage absolutely
necessary to a fire-engine. It is also hardly possible to believe that
a town, immediately situated on an arm of the sea, should be destitute
of water[586].
I can however produce from a contemporary writer, a strong proof that
Pliny alluded here to a fire-engine, and I do not find that the passage
has been before quoted. Apollodorus, the architect, who was employed
by the emperor Trajan in constructing the celebrated bridge over the
Danube, and erecting some large works at Rome, and who was put to death
by his successor Adrian, out of revenge for a jeering answer which he
received from him, as we are told by Dio Cassius, describes in the
fragment of his book on warlike machines, how assistance may be given
when the upper part of a building is on fire, and the machine called
_sipho_ is not at hand. In this case leathern bags filled with water
are to be fastened to long pipes in such a manner, that by pressing the
bags the water may be forced through the pipes to the place which is
in flames[587]. The _sipho_, therefore, was a machine by which water
might be easily projected to a considerable height, to extinguish a
place on fire that could not be reached by any other means.
That in the fourth century at least a fire-engine, properly so called,
was understood under the term _sipho_, is fully proved by Hesychius,
and also by Isidorus, who lived in the beginning of the seventh
century[588]. As the latter remarks that such engines were employed in
the East for extinguishing fires, there is reason to conclude that they
were not then used in the west.
The question still remains, at what time this apparatus for
extinguishing fires was introduced at Rome. From the numerous
ordinances for preventing accidents by fire, and in regard to
extinguishing fires, which occur in the Roman laws[589], there is
reason to conjecture that this capital was not unprovided with those
useful implements and machines, of the want of which in a provincial
town Pliny complains, and which he himself had supplied. This
conjecture, however, I am not able to prove; and instances both in
ancient and modern times show that the good police establishments of
small towns are not always to be found in capitals. Antioch and several
other towns were provided with lanterns, which were wanting even in the
proud Rome. But what excites some doubt is, that fire-engines are never
mentioned in the numerous accounts given of the fires which took place
in that city. At present it is impossible to speak of a misfortune of
this kind without stating whether a sufficient number of engines were
assembled, and what they effected, as Pliny has not failed to do in his
short account of the fire at Nicomedia.
One passage, however, in Ulpian is commonly quoted as a proof that in
his time there were fire-engines at Rome. Where he enumerates those
things which ought to belong to a house when sold, he mentions,
besides other articles used for extinguishing fires, _siphones_[590].
But if this word means here fire-engines, the passage seems to
prove too much; for it must then be admitted that each house had a
fire-engine of its own. These implements therefore must have been small
hand-engines, such as are kept in many houses at present; and in that
case the passage cannot be adduced as a proof of public engines, such
as Pliny regrets the want of at Nicomedia. But it is much more probable
that Ulpian alludes only to those _siphones_ which, according to the
account of Strabo, were to be found in every house at Rome; that is,
pipes which conveyed water to it for domestic purposes.
From the total want of fire-engines, or the imperfect manner in
which they were constructed, what Seneca says must have been true,
namely, that the height of the houses at Rome rendered it impossible
to extinguish them when on fire[591]. That the buildings there were
exceedingly high, and the lanes, the bridges and even the principal
streets remarkably narrow, is well-known[592]. It is supposed by
Archenholz and others, that the houses at Rome were built of such a
height on account of the great heat in that warm climate; but the chief
reason was undoubtedly that assigned by Vitruvius[593], which still
produces a like effect. For want of room on the earth, the buildings
were extended towards the heavens; so that at last the greatest height
of an edifice was fixed by law at seventy, and afterwards at sixty
feet. In Hamburg, at present, where ground is dear and daily becoming
more valuable, the greater part of the houses are little less than
sixty feet in height; a few even are seventy; and that it is thereby
rendered difficult, if not impossible, notwithstanding the perfection
of the German engines, to extinguish fires, is proved by the melancholy
instance of Gera, where the houses are now built lower. With Neubert’s
engine, which was tried at Hamburg in 1769, eight firemen threw
eleven and a half cubic feet of water to the height of sixty-two or
sixty-three feet.
In the East engines were employed not only to extinguish but to
produce fires. The Greek fire, invented by Callinicus, an architect
of Heliopolis, a city afterwards named Balbec, in the year 678, the
use of which was continued in the East till 1291[594], and which was
certainly liquid[595], was employed in many different ways; but chiefly
on board ship, being thrown from large fire-engines on the ships of
the enemy. Sometimes this fire was kindled in particular vessels,
which might be called fire-ships, and which were introduced among a
hostile fleet; sometimes it was put into jars and other vessels, which
were thrown at the enemy by means of projectile machines[596], and
sometimes it was squirted by the soldiers from hand-engines; or, as
appears, blown through pipes. But the machines with which this fire
was discharged from the fore-part of ships, could not have been either
hand-engines or such blow-pipes. They were constructed of copper and
iron, and the extremity of them sometimes resembled the open mouth and
jaws of a lion or other animal; they were painted and even gilded,
and it appears that they were capable of projecting the fire to a
great distance[597]. These machines by ancient writers are expressly
called spouting-engines. John Cameniata, speaking of the siege of his
native city, Thessalonica, which was taken by the Saracens in the
year 904, says that the enemy threw fire into the wooden works of the
besieged, which was blown into them by means of tubes, and thrown
from other vessels[598]. This passage, which I do not find quoted in
any of the works that treat on the Greek fire, proves that the Greeks
in the beginning of the tenth century were no longer the only people
acquainted with the art of preparing this fire, the precursor of our
gunpowder. The emperor Leo, who about the same period wrote his art of
war, recommends such engines, with a metal covering, to be constructed
in the fore-part of ships[599], and he twice afterwards mentions
engines for throwing out Greek fire[600]. In the East one may easily
have conceived the idea of loading some kind of pump with the Greek
fire; as the use of a forcing-pump for extinguishing fires was long
known there before the invention of Callinicus.
At what time the towns in Germany were first furnished with
fire-engines I am not able to determine. In my opinion they had
regulations in regard to fires much earlier than engines; and the
former do not seem to be older than the first half of the sixteenth
century. The oldest respecting the city of Frankfort-on-the-Maine,
with which I am acquainted, is of the year 1460. The first general
ordinance respecting fires in Saxony was issued by Duke George in 1521.
The first for the city of Dresden, which extended also to the whole
country, was dated 1529. In many towns, the first regulations made by
public authority for preventing fires will no doubt be found in the
general regulations in regard to building, which seem to be somewhat
older than the particular ordinances concerning fires. At Augsburg an
express regulation in regard to building was drawn up and made publicly
known as early as 1447. In turning over old chronicles, it is remarked
that great fires began to occur less frequently in the sixteenth
century; and this is undoubtedly to be ascribed to the improved mode
of building[601], the precautions enjoined by governments to prevent
fires, and the introduction of apparatus for extinguishing them. But
by the invention of fire-engines, every thing in this respect was so
much changed, that a complete revision of the regulations in regard to
the extinguishing of fires became necessary; and therefore the first
mention of town fire-engines will in all probability be found in the
new fire ordinances of the sixteenth and following century.
It has been remarked by Von Stetten, that in the building accounts of
the city of Augsburg, fire-engines are first mentioned in the year
1518. They are called there _instruments for fires_, _water syringes_
useful at fires; and these names seem to announce that the machine
was then in its infancy. At that time they were made by a goldsmith
at Friedberg, named Anthony Blatner, who the same year became a
citizen of Augsburg. From the account added,--that the wheels and
levers were constructed by a wheelwright, and from the greatness of the
expense,--there is reason to conclude that these were not small, simple
hand-engines, but large and complex machines. In that respectable
dictionary entitled Maaler’s Teutschsprach, Zurich, 1561, I find
fire-hooks and fire-ladders, but no instrument similar to a fire-engine.
In the year 1657, the well-known jesuit Caspar Schott was struck
with admiration on seeing at Nuremberg a fire-engine, which had been
made there by John Hautsch. It stood on a sledge, ten feet long and
four feet broad. The water-cistern was eight feet in length, four
in height, and two in width. It was moved by twenty-eight men, and
forced a stream of water an inch in diameter to the height of eighty
feet[602]; consequently over the houses. The machine was drawn by
two horses. Hautsch distributed throughout Germany an engraving of
it, with an offer of constructing similar ones at a moderate price,
and teaching the use of them; but he refused to show the internal
construction of it to Schott, who however readily conjectured it.
From what he says of it, one may easily perceive that the cylinders
did not stand in a perpendicular direction, but lay horizontally in a
box, so that the pistons moved horizontally, and not vertically, as at
present. Upright cylinders therefore seem to belong to the more modern
improvements. Schott adds, that this was not a new invention, as there
were such engines in other towns; and he himself forty years before,
and consequently in 1617, had seen one, but much smaller, in his
native city. He was born, as is well-known, in 1608, at Königshofen,
not far from Würzburg. George Hautsch also, son of the above artist,
constructed similar engines, and perhaps with improvements, for
Wagenseil[603] and others have ascribed to him the invention.
The first regulations at Paris respecting fires, as far as is known,
were made to restrain incendiaries, who in the fourteenth century,
under the name of _Boutefoux_, occasioned great devastation, not
only in the capital, but in the provinces. This city appears to have
obtained fire-engines for the first time in the year 1699; at any
rate the king at that period gave an exclusive right to Dumourier
Duperrier to construct those machines called _pompes portatives_; and
he was engaged at a certain salary to keep in repair seventeen of
them, purchased for Paris, and to procure and to pay the necessary
workmen. In the year 1722 the number of these engines was increased
to thirty, which were distributed in different quarters of the city;
and at that time the contractors received annually 20,000 livres. The
city, however, besides these thirty royal engines, had a great many
others which belonged to the Hotel de Ville, and with which the Sieur
Duperrier had nothing to do[604].
In the middle of the seventeenth century fire-engines indeed were
still very imperfect. They had neither an air-chamber nor buckets, and
required a great many men to work them. They consisted merely of a
sucking-pump and forcing-pump united, which projected the water only
in spurts, and with continual interruption. Such machines, on each
movement of the lever, experience a stoppage, during which no water
is thrown out; and because the pipe is fixed, it cannot convey water
to remote places, though it may reach a fire at no great distance,
where there are doors and windows to afford it a passage. At the
same time the workmen are exposed to danger from the falling of the
houses on fire, and must remove from them to a greater distance.
Hautsch, however, had adapted to his engine a flexible pipe, which
could be turned to any side as might be necessary, but certainly not
an air-chamber, otherwise Schott would have mentioned it. In the time
of Belidor there were no other engines in France, and the same kind
alone were used in England in 1760. Professor Busch at least concludes
so[605], from the account then given by Ferguson, who called Newsham’s
engine, which threw the water out in a continued stream, a new
invention. In Germany the oldest engines are of this kind.
Who first conceived the idea of applying to the fire-engine an
air-chamber, in which the included air, by compressing the water,
forces it out in a continued stream, is not known. According to
a conjecture of Perrault, Vitruvius seems to speak of a similar
construction; but Perrault himself acknowledges that the obscure
passage in question[606] might be explained in another manner. The
air-chamber in its action has a similarity to Hero’s fountain, in which
the air compressed by the water obliges the latter to ascend[607].
I can find no older fire-engine constructed with an air-chamber than
that of which Perrault has given a figure and description. He says it
was kept in the king’s library at Paris, and during fires could project
water to a great height; that it had only one cylinder, and yet threw
out the water in one continued jet. He mentions neither its age nor the
inventor; and I can only add that his book was printed in 1684. The
principle of this machine, however, seems to have been mentioned before
by Mariotte, who on this account is by some considered as the inventor;
but he does not appear to have had any idea of a fire-engine, at least
he does not mention it.
It is certain that the air-chamber, at least in Germany, came into
common use after it was applied by Leupold to fire-engines, a great
number of which he manufactured and sold. He gave an account of it in
a small work, consisting of four sheets quarto, which was published
in 1720, but at first he kept the construction a secret. The engines
which he sold consisted of a strong copper box closely shut and
well-soldered. They weighed no more than sixteen pounds, occupied
little room, had only one cylinder; and a man with one of them could
force up the water without interruption to the height of from twenty
to thirty feet. About 1725 Du Fay saw one of Leupold’s engines at
Strasburg, and discovered by conjecture the construction of it, which
he made known in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences at Paris
for that year. It is very singular that on this occasion Du Fay says
nothing of Mariotte, or of the engine in the king’s library. Leupold,
however, had some time before, that is in 1724, given a description
and figure in his Theatrum Machinarum Hydraulicarum[608], with which
undoubtedly Du Fay was not acquainted.
Another improvement, no less useful, is the leather hose added to the
engine, which can be lengthened or shortened as necessary, and to which
the fire-pipe is applied, so that the person who directs the jet of
water can approach the fire with less danger. This invention, it is
well known, belongs to two Dutchmen, both named Jan van der Heide[609],
who were inspectors of the apparatus for extinguishing fires at
Amsterdam. The first public experiments made with it took place in
1672; and were attended with so much success, that at a fire next
year, the old engines were used for the last time, and the new ones
introduced in their stead. In 1677, the inventor obtained an exclusive
privilege to make these engines during the period of twenty-five years.
In 1682, engines on this construction were distributed in sufficient
number throughout the whole city, and the old ones were entirely
laid aside. In 1695 there were in Amsterdam sixty of these engines,
the nearest six of which were to be employed at every fire. In the
course of a few years they were common throughout all the towns in the
Netherlands.
All these circumstances have been related by the inventor in a
particular work; which, on account of the excellent engravings it
contains, is exceedingly valuable[610]. Of these, the first seven
represent dangerous conflagrations at which the old engines were used,
but produced very little effect. One of them is the fire which took
place in the stadthouse of Amsterdam in the year 1652. The twelve
following plates represent fires which were extinguished by means of
the new engines, and exhibit, at the same time, the various ways in
which the engines may be employed with advantage. According to an
annexed calculation, the city of Amsterdam lost by ten fires, when the
old apparatus was in use, 1,024,130 florins; but in the following five
years, after the introduction of the new engines, the loss occasioned
by forty fires amounted only to 18,355 florins; so that the yearly
saving was ninety-eight per cent. Of the internal construction of these
engines no description or plates have been given; nor do I remember to
have read a passage in any author from which it can be concluded that
they were furnished with an air-chamber, though in the patents they
were always called _spouting-engines_, which threw up one continued jet
of water. The account given even of the nature of the pipe or hose is
short and defective, probably with a view to render it more difficult
to be imitated. It is only said that it was made of leather in a
particular manner; and that, besides being thick, it was capable of
resisting the force of the water.
The conveyer or bringer was invented also about the same time by these
two Dutchmen. This name is given at present to a box which has on the
one side a sucking-pump, and on the other a forcing-pump. The former
serves to raise the water from a stream, well, or other reservoir,
by means of a stiff leathern pipe, having at the extremity a metal
strainer pierced with holes to prevent the admission of dirt, and
which is kept suspended above the mud by a round piece of cork. The
forcing-pump drives the water thus drawn up through a leathern pipe
into the engine, and renders the laborious conveyance of water by
buckets unnecessary.
At first, indeed, this machine was exceedingly simple. It consisted
only of a leathern pipe screwed to the engine, the end of which widened
into a bag supported near the reservoir, and kept open by means of a
frame, while the labourers poured water into it from buckets. A pump,
however, to answer this purpose was soon constructed by the Van der
Heides, who named it a _snake-pump_. By its means they were able to
convey the water from the distance of a thousand feet; but I can find
no account of the manner in which it was made. From the figure, I
am inclined to think that they used only one cylinder with a lever.
Sometimes also they placed a portable pump in the water, which was
thus drawn into a leathern hose connected with it, and conveyed to
the engine. Every pipe or hose for conveying water in this manner
they called a _wasserschlange_, water-snake, and this was not made of
leather, like the hose furnished with a fire-pipe, but of sail-cloth.
They announced, however, that it required a particular preparation,
which consisted in making it water-tight by means of a proper cement.
The pipe also, through which the water is drawn up, must be stiffened
and distended by means of metal rings; otherwise the external air, on
the first stroke of the pump, would compress the pipe, so that it could
admit no water. It is here seen that pipes made of sail-cloth are not
so new an invention as many have supposed. That our present apparatus
for conveying water to the fire-engine is much more ingenious, as well
as convenient, must be allowed; but I would strongly recommend that in
all cities there should be pumps, or running wells of water, to the
spout of which pipes having one end screwed to a fire-engine might be
affixed. The Van der Heides, among the advantages of their invention,
stated that this apparatus rendered it unnecessary to have leathern
buckets, which are expensive, or at any rate lessened their number, as
well as that of the workmen.
From this account, the truth of which cannot be doubted, one may
readily believe that engines with leathern hose were certainly not
invented by Gottfried Fuchs, director of the fire apparatus at
Copenhagen, in the year 1697, as publicly announced in 1717, with the
addition, that this invention was soon employed both in Holland and at
Hamburg. Fuchs seems only to have made known the Dutch invention in
Denmark, on occasion of the great fire which took place on the 19th
of April 1689, at the Opera-house of Amalienburg, when the beautiful
palace of that name, and more than 350 persons were consumed. At any
rate we are told in history, that, in consequence of this calamity,
an improvement was made in the fire establishment, by new regulations
issued on the 23rd of July 1689, and that engines on the Dutch
construction, which had been used more than twelve years at Amsterdam,
were introduced.
Hose or pipes of this kind for conveying water were however not
entirely unknown to the ancients. At least the architect Apollodorus
says, that to convey water to high places exposed to fiery darts, the
gut of an ox, having a bag filled with water affixed to it, might
be employed; for on compressing the bag, the water would be forced
up through the gut to the place of its destination[611]. This was a
conveyer of the simplest kind.
Among the latest proposals for improving the hose is that of weaving
one without a seam. In 1720, some of this kind were made of hemp at
Leipsic, by Beck, a lace-weaver, as we are told by Leupold, in his
before-mentioned work on fire-engines, which was printed the same
year. After this they were made by Erke, a linen-weaver of Weimar; and
at a later period they were made of linen at Dresden, and also in
Silesia[612]. In England, Hegner and Ehrliholzer had a manufactory at
Bethnal-green, near London, where they made water-tight hose without
seams[613]. Some of the same kind are made by M. Mögling on his estate
near Stutgard, on a loom of his own invention, and are now used in many
towns of the duchy of Wirtemberg. I shall here remark, that Braun had a
loom on which shirts could be wove without a seam, like those curious
works of art sometimes brought from the East Indies, and of which he
has given a full description with an engraving[614].
In the last place, I shall observe, that notwithstanding the belief of
the Turks in predestination, fire-engines are in use at Constantinople,
having been introduced by Ibrahim Effendi.
[The fire-engines now in use are made upon the air-chamber principle
above-described. Mr. Braithwaite has applied steam-power to the working
of fire-engines. On this principle a locomotive and a floating engine
have been constructed. The former was first employed at a fire in the
Argyle Rooms in 1830. It required eighteen minutes to elapse before the
water in the boiler was raised to 212°, and threw up from thirty to
forty tons of water per hour, to a height of ninety feet. Two others
have been constructed by the same engineer, one of which threw up
ninety tons of water per hour, and one made for the king of Prussia
threw up about 61¾ tons per minute. In the steam floating engine which
lies in the Thames, the machinery either propels the vessel, or works
the pumps as required. The pipes used for conveying the water from the
plugs to the engines are now constructed of leather, the seams being
either sewed up or fastened with metallic rivets.]