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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Fig. 1. Hero's Fire Engine, 150 b. c. 

 (From Knight's Mechanical Dictionary, 

 by permission of the publishers.) 



1518, speak of " water syringes useful at fires," and from that 

 time onward mention is made of fire engines in Denmark, Ger- 

 many, Holland, France, and Great Britain. From the work above 

 referred to it is stated that Decaus, in his Forcible Movements, 



published in 1615, describes a Ger- 

 man engine of that period in the 

 following quaint language : 



" A rare and necessary engin, 

 by which you may give a greate 

 reliefe to houses that are on fire. 

 This engin is much practiced in 

 Germany, and it hath been seen 

 what great and ready help it may 

 bring : for although the fire be 

 40 foot high, the said engin shall 

 there cast its water by help of 

 four or five men lifting up and 

 putting down a long handle, in 

 form of a lever, where the handle 

 of the- pump is fastened. The said 

 pump is easily understood : there are two suckers (valves) within 

 it, one below to open when the handle is lifted up, and to shut 

 when it is put down, and another to open to let out the water ; 

 and at the end of the said engin there is a man which holds the 

 copper pipe, turning it to and again to the place where the fire 

 shall be." 



In 1632 there was a patent granted in England to one Thomas 

 Grant for a fire engine. Caspar Schott, of Nuremberg, manu- 

 factured one in 1657 that, when worked by twenty-eight men, 

 would play a stream eighty feet in length. In 1663 John Van 

 der Hayden, of Amsterdam, patented another, and to him is given 

 the credit of bringing the machine to the modern form of hand 

 engine. Several other early engines are mentioned in different 

 works on the subject; among them the " pompe portative," 

 patented in France by Duperrier in 1699. To this Perrault 

 added the air chamber. 



Although many different engines had been invented, buckets 

 and syringes were in use in England and on the Continent until 

 far into the seventeenth century. The largest of the hand 

 syringes were of brass, and held no more than a gallon. Two 

 men were required with each, one to hold the syringe and the 

 other to direct the stream. In the sixteenth century larger ones 

 were made and placed on wheels. These were capable of holding 

 about a barrel of water and had no hose. The direction of the 

 stream, or, more properly speaking, of the series of squirts, could 

 be changed up and down, as the syringe rested on pivots. To 



