SOS M. Aldini's Incombustible Dresses 



one, for there can be no doubt that on most occasions it 

 would alone defend the fireman from the effects of heat. 



It is with these two garments that M. Aldini first, and 

 after his example a great number of firemen have confronted 

 the most raging flames. The two following experiments were 

 witnessed by the committee of the Academy. 



A fireman, doubly enveloped in the incombustible and the 

 metallic garments, presented his face to the flame of a straw 

 fire, and he endured its action for a minute and twenty seconds. 

 Another fireman, protected like the first, but having an addi- 

 tional piece of amianthus cloth on his front, resisted the flame 

 during two minutes and thirty-seven seconds without suffering 

 any pain. The pulse of the first rose from 80 in a minute to 

 120, and that of the second from 72 to 100. 



This experiment, however, was only the prelude to another 

 more imposing, viz. the passage of the firemen through flames 

 for a distance of thirty-one feet. 



Two parallel ranges of straw and small wood, supported by 

 iron rods, were placed at the distance of about three feet three 

 inches. When the materials were set on fire, the heat could 

 not be endured at a less distance than eight or ten feet. The 

 united flame of the tvvo burning ranges rose to the height of 

 nearly ten feet, and seemed to fill the whole space between 

 the rows. At this time, six firemen, shielded by the appara- 

 tus of M. Aldini, and following one another at a short dis- 

 tance, run several times in succession through the burning 

 space, the flame of which was kept alive by fresh additions of 

 fuel. One of them carried a child, eight years old, in an osier 

 basket, covered externally with wire gauze. The child had 

 only a mask of the incombustible cloth. This experiment, 

 which the assistants did not perform without a feeling of terror, 

 had the most satisfactory result, and would have been re- 

 garded as completely decisive if it had been made in the mid- 

 dle of smoke. None of the firemen received any burns. The 

 one who carried the child brought it back at the end of a 

 minute in consequence of the cries of the child, who had been 

 seized witli terror in consequence of the fireman having too 

 briskly swung him upon his shoulders. The child, however, 

 had suffered nothing. The skin, when it came out of the 



