How Man Learned to Fight Fire
When you see the modern fire engine racing through the streets, gongs ringing, with the firemen hanging on and the police clearing the track, you should remember that it has taken man a long time to learn as much as he has about fighting fire.
No sooner did man learn to make fire than he found it necessary to learn how to put it out.
The first fire apparatus of record is found in Rome. The Gauls burned the city in 390 B. C., each citizen was ordered to keep in his house a “machine for extinguishing fire.” This consisted of a syringe.
The first record of an actual machine for putting out fire is by Hero of Alexandria. This contrivance, a “siphon used in conflagrations,” was used in Egypt about a hundred and fifty years before Christ.
The first record of what we would call a fire department is also found in Rome. A disastrous fire, occurring in the reign of Augustus called his attention to the benefit of a regular fire brigade would bring. So he organized a fire department. It consisted of seven companies of a thousand men each.
The first real fire engines were used in 1633 at a big fire on London Bridge. The first fire hose was invented by the two Van der Heydes in 1672. One of the earliest engines used consisted of a tank drawn by two horses, which threw a stream an inch in diameter to a height of eighty feet. An improved engine was invented in 1721 by Newsham, of London, and the first engine used in the United States was made by Newsham. The first steam fire engine was invented by John Braithwaite, of London, in 1829.
Fire alarms came into use in medieval times. It was the custom, in many of the towns to have a watchman stationed on a high building whose duty it was to look for fires. As soon as he saw one, he gave warning by blowing a horn, firing a gun, or ringing a bell.
The first London fire department consisted of ten men of each ward.
The first municipal American fire department was created in Boston in 1678. The fire engine was a hand pump bought in England.
The first leather fire hose was made in America in 1808 in Philadelphia. Rubber hose was first made in England at about 1820.