Another special type of fire engine is in use on Canadian railways. A 10,000-gallon tank is built upon a flat-car and equipped with a pump operated by the train-heating apparatus of the locomotive which draws it. The pump is pow erful enough to throw two one-inch streams to a distance of 200 feet from the car without stretching hose.
the name applied to any means of escape from a burning building. Many suggestions have been made for contriving the means of effecting this, some of them being for apparatus to be used in the interior of a building, and some to be used from without. . Of the contrivances to be used within a building the ,simplest are a rope firmly attached to something near a window, or a rope sliding over a pulley fixed to the window-sill, and the like. And of the different machines that have been made for use from without, that which is found to be the most useful is the one invented by Wivell, and consists of a wheel-carriage sup porting a long ladder with a net underneath. The ladder consists of extensions, the main ladder and the upper ladders, the upper folding over the main ladder. When used the ladder is set to the window of a building which is burn ing; the attendant mounts it, and assists those whe are in danger to descend it.
an apparatus for extinguishing fire. It is charged with water and a mixture of dried ferrocyanide of potas sium, sugar and chlorate of potassa. It is set in action by a blow on a glass bottle containing sulphuric acid, which flows over the charge and liberates gas, which, with the water, is emitted at a nozzle and expended upon a fire to quench it. The earliest of modern fire-extinguishers seems to have been that invented by W. A. Graham, of Virginia, about 1837. • It consisted essentially of a contrivance by means of which carbonic acid gas dissolved in water under pressure could be liberated and directed upon burning objects.
Many subsequent improvements have made Gra ham's fire-extinguisher more useful. In the upper part of the cylinder a glass receptacle is placed, containing sulphuric acid and closed with a loosely fitting stopper. When in use the cylinder is inverted, the stopper drops out and the acid mixes with a solution of carbonate of soda. Carbon dioxide is generated instantly and produces considerable pressure, forcing the liquid through a flexible nozzle which is directed on the fire. The Babcock extinguisher consists of a vessel filled with a solution of bicarbonate of soda. In the upper part of the vessel there is a smaller one containing sulphuric acid, sus pended by pivots below its centre. When not in use this inner vessel is kept upright by a rod passing through the stopper of the larger vessel, but in case of fire the rod is withdrawn, thus permitting the inner vessel to topple over and mingle its contents with the bicarbonate of soda. The result, of course, is that carbonic acid gas is at once liberated. Many automatic fire extinguishers, intended to be brought into opera tion by the rise of temperature caused by fire, have been used with more or less satisfactory results. The best known of these are the sprinkler systems, in which water pipes are laid to every room of a building, and in each room is placed a nozzle held closed by an easily fusible metal. When the temperature rises to the danger point, the metal melts, open ing the nozzle and water at high pressure is released in the room. Extinguishers charged with chloroform or carbon tetrachloride tures are used in fires caused by electric currents as these solutions are non-conductors.