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 Vitruvius582, 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 cylinders583; 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 flames584. 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 Strabo585, 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 water586.

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 flames587. 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 century588. 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 laws589, 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, siphones590. 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 fire591. That the buildings there were exceedingly high, and the lanes, the bridges and even the principal streets remarkably narrow, is well-known592. 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 Vitruvius593, 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 1291594, and which was certainly liquid595, 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 machines596, 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 distance597. 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 vessels598. 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 ships599, and he twice afterwards mentions engines for throwing out Greek fire600. 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 building601, 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 feet602; 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 Wagenseil603 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 do604.

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 so605, 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 question606 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 ascend607.

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 Hydraulicarum608, 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 Heide609, 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 valuable610. 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 destination611. 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 Silesia612. In England, Hegner and Ehrliholzer had a manufactory at Bethnal-green, near London, where they made water-tight hose without seams613. 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 engraving614.

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.]