320 Engines and Squirts at the Fire of London, 1666. [Book III.

transportation the whole was placed on a sied, and dragged to a fire byropes. The bore of the forcing pipe seems to have been small comparedwith that of the pump cylinder, a cireumstance combined with the longlever and the number of men employed in working the latter, that contri-buted to increase the elevation of the jet. This machine exhibits a de-cided improvement on the primitive syringe, and constitutes a great Steptowards the modern engine. In the short angular tube to which the jetpipe is attached, we behold the germ of the more valuable goose-neck.

Notwithstanding the superiority of pump engines over the syringe, manyyears elapsed before they were generally adopted. “ The English [ob -serves a British writer] appear to have been unacquainted with the pro-gress made by the German engineers ; or to have been very slow inavailing themselves of their discoveries, for at the close of the 16th Cen-tury “ kand squirts” were first introduced in London for extinguishingfires; and it was not tili the beginning of the next, that they began toplace them in portable and larger reservoirs—when placed in the latterand worked by a lever, the engines thus obtained were considered a greatmechanical achievement; for when in 1633, three of them were taken toextinguish a large fire on London bridge, they were considered “ suchexcellent things, that nothing that was ever devised could do so rnuchgood, yet none of them did prosper, for they were all broken.” The ob-servation that “ hand squirts” or syringes were placed in reservoirs andthen worked by a lever is not strictly correct: they were small forcingpumps that were employed. A syringe could not act at all if permanentlyfixed in a vessel, because it discharges the water through the same orificeby which it receives it. Some improvements were made on fire-enginesby Greatorix in 16-56, as mentioned by Evelyn : what they were is notknown. The probability is, that they related to the carriage or sied. Ifhis engines were the same that were advertised in 1658, this was thecase, for they were recommended as “ more traversable in less room, andmore portable than formerly used.” Fosbroke’s Encyc . Antiq.

But the fire-engine as thus improved had still many imperfections : thewater was projected in spurts as from a syringe ; and the jet not onlyceased with the stroke of the piston, but a portion of the water was inconsequence lost by falling between the fire and engine at the terminationof each stroke. An obvious mode of rendering the jet constant was byconnecting two pumps to one discharging pipe, (as in the figure of Heron’s,)and working the pistons alternately either by a double lever or two singleones. This was first adopted by the old German engineers, and thusanother Step was taken towards perfecting these useful instruments. In-stead of a circular tub, a square box or cistern was adopted and mountedon four solid wheels in place of a sied; and a strainer, or false bottom,perforated with numerous small holes, was placed within the cistern toprevent gravel or dirt, thrown in with the water, from entering the pump.Such appehr to have been the best fire-engines in England when thegreat fire in London occurred in 1666. They are referred to in the officialaccount of the fire, dated Whitehall , September 8th, of the same year—“ this lamentable fire in a short time became too big to be managed by Ojmjengines.” But nothing ean show their general inefficiency in a strongerlight than the measures adopted by the city government the following yearto guard against a similar calamity. Instead of relying upon engines, theyseem to have retained their confidence in the old syringe.

1. By an act of the Common Council, the city Was divided into fourdistricts, and “ each thereof was to be provided with eight hundred lea-thern buckets—fifty ladders, of different sizes, from twelve to forty-two