322

Extractfrom Harris’s Hntory of Inventers. [Book III.

the jet pipe was secured. To work this tnachine, the rim of ithe lowervessel was connected at opposite points, by two iron rods or slings and across head, to the end of alever, by which the lower vessel was moved upand down—compressing the bag when raised, and Stretching it to itsnatural length when lowered; like thelantern bellows No. 105, or the bel-lows pump No. 106. To make the vessel rise and fall perpendicularly,the two rods were passed through holes in the plank. Water was keptin the cistern as high as the plank; so that when the movable vessel wasraised the contents of the bag would be forced into the upper vessel andexpelled through the jet pipe, and when it was again lowered, the waterwould enter through its valve and fill both as before. These engines, heobserves, had sometimes two levers and were worked by two men, “ thelower brasse [vessel] being poysed with two sweeps.”

The goose-neck was used in England at this time. It is not representedin the figures, which are very indifferently executed, but is sufficientlywell defined in the description of one of the engines. The author direetäa hollow ball to be placed on the orifice of the forcing pipe, “ having a[jet] pipe at the top of it, and made to screw another pipe [elbow] uponit, to direct the water to any place.”

Small or hand engines continued to be employed in London in the 18thCentury. This appears from a law passed in the 6th year of Queen Anne’sreign, by which it was enacted that “ each parish shall keep a large en-gine, and an hand, engine, and a leather pipe, and socket of the Same sizeas the plug or fire cock, [of the water mains,] that the socket may be putinto the pipe to convey the water clear to the engine,” under a penalty often pounds. In case of a fire, the first person who arrived with a parishengine to extinguish it was entitled to thirty Shillings—the second twenty,and the third ten, provided the engines were in good Order, “ with a socketor hose, or leather pipe.” The following year, the owners or keepers of“ other large engines,” (not parish engines,) were entitled to the samereward upon arriving with them and assisting in extinguishing a fire.

It is a singulär proof of the general ignorance of hydraulic machinery,or want of enterprise in London pump makers of the 16th and 17th cen-turies, that they so long c.ontinued the use of “ squirts” and engines withsingle cylinders, when they had daily before their eyes in the ThamesWater-works examples of the advantages of combining two or more toone pipe. The application also of such machines as fire-engines -was ob-viously enough shown to them; for when Maurice had finished his laborsin 1582, the mayor and aldermen went to witness an experiment with hispumps at London bridge: “ and they saw him throw the water over SaintMagnus ’s steeple, before which time [says Stow] no such thmg was knownin England as this raising of water.” Immediately subsequent to the abovedate, the “ squirt” manufacturers might surely have imitated Maurice’smachine, but they did not for nearly a hundred years afterwards; that is,not until such engines had been introduced a second time from Germany ,and designed expressly to put out fires.

Before the improvements of Newsham and his contemporaries of the18th Century, some important additions would seem to have been madein England, since, previous to 1686 “ the engine for extinguishing fire”was claimed as an English invention. This is stated in a small volume pub-lished that year in London by John Harris, and apparently edited by him.It is entitled “ A pleasant and compendious history of the first inventersand instituters of the most famous arts, misteries, laws, customs andmanners in the whole World, together with many other rarities and re-markable things rarely made known, and never before made public : to