Putting Out Some History

Welcome back to Becoming Sage. My name is Elan Baumgarten and this is the history of the fire extinguisher. Whether it sprays foam or chemicals - whether it’s the first fire bucket brigades, or the modern day canister equipped throughout public facilities, they are wildly important to maintaining a level of safety from fires. These bucket brigades are widely recognized as a Roman concept to hasten the transportation of water to fires. The Alexandrians used a water pump in 200 BCE that could deliver water to fires. In the Middle Ages they used a contraption known as a “squirt”. These squirts were kind of like air pumps that one might use for a bicycle tire or a celebratory balloon. They shot high speed bursts of water at the fires using compressed air. They even used these squirts on perhaps one of the most famous fires in human history - the Great Fire of London in the year 1666. Also in England, but this time in 1723, Ambrose Godfrey patented the very first version of the fire extinguisher. This crude contraption used gunpowder to propel fire-extinguishing liquid onto fires. There were several similar contraptions invented after this - but it was about 100 years until anything really substantial was introduced. A British Captain by the name of George William Manby invented the first recognizable fire extinguisher in 1818. It contained about 3 gallons of potassium carbonate. The best part about it was compressed air. Compressed air has been around for much of history - but it was in the mid 1700s when mechanically compressed air was introduced. Roughly 60 years after Manby’s invention, Almon M. Granger patented his very own soda-acid fire extinguisher. This 1881 patent took advantage of the chemical reaction between a sodium bicarbonate solution and sulphuric acid. His machine shot pressurized water onto the fire. He had two kinds of fire extinguishers, but the difference was in the method of breaking a vial of sulphuric acid suspended inside the extinguisher. In one the vial is broken, and in the other a capsule’s cap is released via a stopper. All of this pressure built up inside the fire extinguisher until it all shot through a short hose on the end. Read & Campbell also invented a fire extinguisher in the very same year! It was based around water, unlike their later invention, which used carbon tetrachloride. This was called Petrolex and they marketed it towards automobile fires. 1905 rolls around and Alexander Laurant was experimenting with chemical foam extinguishers in Russia. While the external appearance and actual function are pretty similar to a soda-acid extinguisher, the physical internal components are different. Just 5 years later The Pyrene Manufacturing Company applies for a patent on a carbon tetrachloride extinguisher. It layered a fume-blanket over the fire, depriving it of the oxygen it needed to survive. A year later they filed a patent for a smaller more portable device that was functionally the same. It ranged anywhere from 0.6 liters to 9 liters. In 1924 the Walter Kidde Company brought the CO2 extinguisher to US markets. This was incredibly useful because fires would often break out in telephone switchboards. Telephone companies like Bell Telephone needed a fire-extinguisher that wouldn’t conduct electricity. These CO2 extinguishers were the solution. Even today, CO2 extinguishers are often used. Movie sets use Carbon Dioxide fire extinguishers because they are safe to use on people. DuGas created a dry-chemical extinguisher in 1928 only a few years later. It used sodium bicarbonate. This was a specialty fire extinguisher for another thirty or so years, but it was used for pressurized gas fires. It was then that ABC - a dry chemical - arrived in the United States from Europe. The ABC dry chemical powder is non-toxic. In the late 1960s the United States Navy developed Purple-K. Today there are lots of different fire extinguishers for lots of different kinds of fire. It is important to make sure you have a fire extinguisher to handle the fires you are most likely to have. You could put out a Class A combustible fire with simple water or even just be smothering it. Class A fires start out of wood or other materials that can catch fire. Class C fires on the other hand require non-conductive chemicals to put out. Class C would be an electrical fire. There are classifications for lots of other kinds of fires too, whether it be fuels or paint, metallic, or grease kitchen fires. While we can’t cover every type of fire and what to use on it in this episode - it is incredibly important that you do your own research to stay safe, save lives, and potentially your house. Thank you for listening to Becoming Sage, my name is Elan Baumgarten. Don’t forget to tune in next week with your friends and family for another episode of Becoming Sage!