328

Dutch Engines and Hose Pipe.

[Book III.

books were commonly without the means to gratify it. It is however,singulär that this account of the air vessel should have escaped the re-searches of Beckman, and especially so as it was republished in 1704 byHarris in his Lexieon Technicum, and in 1705 by Lowthorp in the abridg-ment of the Philosophical Transactions . He observes, “ I can find noolder engine with an air chamber than that described by Perrault, and ofwhich he has given a figure. He says it was preserved in the king’slibrary at Paris; that it was employed for throwing water to a greatheight during fires ; and that it had only one cylinder, and yet threw outa continued jet of water. He neither mentions the period of the inventionnor the name of the inventor, and I can only add that his book 'was printedin 1684.” Beckman, in a note, States that he had not seen the first edi-tion of Perrault’s work, and therefore knew not whether the French en-gine was described in it. We may here make the same remark, since theonly copy in our possession is of the edition of 1684, having endeavored,but without success, to procure an impression of the previous one.

In 1672 hosc or leathern tubes were first publicly used, in modern times,to convey water from engines to fires by John and Nicholas Yan derHeide, in Amsterdam , of which city they were inspectors or superintend-ents of fire apparatus. They made the tubes in fifty feet lengths, withbrass screws fitted to the ends, so that any number could quickly be con-nected together, as occasions might require. The introduction of hosepipes forms an epoch in the history of fire-engines, for they wonderfullyincreased the effect and extended the application of these machines. Pre-vious to their adoption large engines could not be used to extinguish firesin the interior of dwellings—it was only when the flames burst throughthe Windows or roof, that they came into play ; and even then, it was ofteilwith difficulty and danger that they could be brought sufficiently near todischarge the water with effect, while in most cases the jet was so muchdiffused by the resistance of the air or wind as to descend rather in ashower of spray than in a compact stream. For want of hose the enginesthemselves were also frequently burnt; this was indeed a common occur-rence, and is often mentioned in the notices of conflagrations. In the greatfire of London the rapid spread of the flames drove the firemen from theirengines, and many were consumed. In 1731 a great part of the town ofBlandford, England, was destroyed, and in an account published by oneof the sufferers, it is said “ the engines were play’d, but were soon burnt.”This loss of engines was invariably caused by the want of hose ; for whenplenty of the latter is at hand, the former can be placed and worked atany convenient distance from the fire, and the liquid discharged uponalmost any part of it.

Another advantage resulting from the introduction of leathern pipeswas in making the engines supply themselves. Before the use of hose,water was poured from buckets into the cistern in which the pumps wereplaced; hence when a fire broke out, one of the first objects was to forma lane of men, extending from the engine to the nearest rivulet, pond,well, or other source of water ; those on one side passed along the fullbuckets to the engine, while those on the other returnedthe empty ones. Todispense with this number of men, the Van der Heides screwed one endof a hose pipe to the lower part of the cistern and extended the other tothe edge of a pond or -well, where its orifice was widened into a bag thatwas kept open by a frame. Into this bag the labourers poured the con-tents of their buckets, and sometimes portable pumps were used to raisewater into it, for it was necessary that it should be sufficiently elevatedabove the cistern of the engine that its contents might readily flow into