FIRE-ENGINE. A machine employed for throwing a jet of water for the purpose of ex tinguishing fire. Machines for the extinguishing of fires have been used from a very early date. They were employed by the Romans, and are re ferred to by Pliny; but he gives no account of their construction. Apollodorus, architect to the Emperor Trojan, speaks of leathern bags, with pipes attached, from which water was projected by squeezing the hags. hero of Alexandria, in his Treatise on Pneumatics (written probably about ts.e. 150), proposition 27, describe, a ma chine which he calls 'the sipl used in eontla grations.' It consists of two cylinders and pis tons connected by a reeiproeating beam, which raises and lowers the pistons alternately, and thus, with the aid of valves opening only toward the jet, projects the water fr it, but not in a continuous stream, as the pressure ceases at, each alteration of stroke.
A &wive with two pumps, worked by levers, is said to have been invented in Egypt in the sec ond century B.c. \ imaratus called Instruments for fires' and 'water syringes useful for fires' are described in the building accounts of the city of Augsburg, 1518. In 1657 Kaspar Sehott de scribed a firc-engine used in Nuremberg, appa rently similar to that described by Ilero. It had a water-cistern, was drawn by two horses, was worked by 28 men, and threw a jet of water an inch in diameter to a height of 80 feet. It was not until late in the seventeenth century that the air-chamber and hose were added, the first being mentioned by Perrault in 1684, and the hose and su•tion-pipe being invented by Van der lleide in 1670. In England small brass hand squirts were used up to the ;lose of the sixteenth century. Paris had fire-engines of sonic sort at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In England, in 1734, engines of various construc tion were manufactured. the most successful of which was that invented by Ne•sham. Two of his machines—thc first invention of the kind ever used in this country—were introduced in New York in 1731. It was more than fifty years after this that the leather valves within the cylinders were superseded by metallic valves, placed in valve-ebests apart from the cylinders and the air chamber. Rotary and somi-rotary pumps were
also introduced. Floating tire-engines worked by hand were used on the Thames before the close of the eighteenth century. In some cases the mechanism that worked the pumps was used to move the paddle-•heels. It was not until 1850 that floating fire-engines worked by steam came into use in England.
So far as known. the first steam fire-engine was developed by Brathwaite in 1829 or 1830. John Ericsson (q.v.) worked on the problem about the same time, and is credited by one writer as having built such an engine with Brathwaite, in London, in 1830, and also with having built one in New York in 1840, very soon after he had come to America. In 1841 an engine was built in New York after plans by Hodge, probably as the result of a competition after the great tire of 1835. This engine was operated occasionally by or for insurance companies, but neither it nor the earlier London engine was satisfactory. In 1850 A. B. Latta, in Cineinnati. produced the first machine which was practically useful. Cincin nati was the first city in the United States to organize a steam fire department, but other large cities and towns rapidly followed the ex ample. In 1872 self-propelled steam fire-engines were delivered to both New York and Boston; and in 1873 one was delivered to Detroit—all of the Amoskeag make. From 1872 to 1898 about twenty similar engines were bought by American cities. Recently a new impetus has been given to the idea of self-propelled fire-en gines and other lire-department apparatus, but only a few had been built up to 1901; nor can their introduction be rapid until motor vehicles become as reliable as the marvelously trained horses of American fire departments. Hand fire pumps, drawn by men or horses, were used prior to the advent of the steam-engine, and are still employed in some small towns. They have been brought to a high degree of perfection for a ma chine of that nature, and are manufactured in a variety of styles and at low prices.