OF
A PORTABLE ENGINE,
For extinguishing Fires.
This Machine (see [Plate 38], [fig. 4]) is intended to be carried or conveyed in a small cart, to the place where an incipient fire may be preluding to it’s fearful horrors! It is, as to form, a common lifting pump, inclosed in a vessel of air, whose spring perpetuates the jet in the usual manner. When used, it is held on two men’s shoulders, by means of a bar going through the ring A. Further, a rope is fastened to each of the extreme rings B C: and a stick put through each of the second rings b c. Two rows of men are then marshalled along the ropes; one set to hold-on, and the other to pull in regular time, the piston c along it’s pump, thereby sucking water through the pipe D, and forcing it through the valve v into the air vessel: from which it is forcibly expelled through the directing pipe E F. Here it is clear, that this small Machine is capable of an effect almost indefinite: since the rows of men may be very numerous; there being always people enough at a fire. To work the Engine by pulling, is nothing more than to repeat many a nautical manœuvre: and if only one man in the company should have learn’t to sing the sailors’ song, they would soon produce—“a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether.” To be serious, a hundred men may as well work at this Machine, as ten; and the effect will keep pace with the cause. In a word, there is scarcely any limit to the abundance of water, that might be thrown on a fire by such an Engine as this; of which I shall say nothing more, save that the bar of the piston rod at c, is intended to be used for drawing it inward, by the efforts of two men, at each interval in the effort of the working-men. A mere inspection of [fig. 4] will fully shew what here remains unsaid.