Fire engine

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Fire engine from 1740 in the museum of the Stiegl brewery in Salzburg

A fire engine or hand-held pressure syringe is a muscle-powered fire pump that is used to fight fires .

history

Fire extinguisher from 1540
Leather fire buckets in the Salem Fire Brigade Museum

The first fire engine was made by Ktesibios in the 3rd century BC. Constructed.

In ancient Rome , there were first of all wealthy businessmen, such as von Crassus , optimized fire brigades , whose equipment included buckets, tear hooks and other things as well as a fire engine that worked on the principle of the pressure pump. Crassus' purely private-sector troops, which comprised around 500 slaves equipped with buckets and tear-hooks, only came into action after accepting a dictated purchase offer ( Plutarch , Crassus 2, 4). Crassus is said to have owed a substantial part of his legendary fortune to this business model. The first public fire brigades were organized under Emperor Augustus . Like many ancient inventions , the fire engine had to be reinvented. In 1518 the Augsburg goldsmith Anton Platter built a large fire engine on behalf of the Augsburg city council. This development was very expensive with a cost of 63 guilders and shows the value of effective fire fighting for early modern cities. In 1655 a Nuremberg compass smith succeeded in another construction. About 16–20 men pumped the water through a long wooden pipe with a lever rod.

Hand pressure box syringe around 1839

In earlier times there was a neighborly extinguishing aid in all places. In the event of a fire, this included the deployment of all residents of the affected community and the neighboring communities. If a fire broke out in any community, a few quick horsemen called for help from the neighboring villages. The only device with which the water was thrown into the embers was from ancient times the leather fire bucket.

The first hand pressure syringes were built around 1600, they were very primitive and not always ready for use. The earliest illustration of a fire engine in use can be found in the town view of Singens in Meisner's treasure chest from 1624. The early fire engines tried to prevent the fire from spreading to objects that were at risk of fire and difficult to reach with water buckets. A direct attempt to extinguish fires or embers was usually not carried out because of the low efficiency. Much therefore depended on the functionality of the fire engines, which is why they had to be checked regularly, either by assigned personnel or as part of exercises. The syringes could be portable or wheeled. A special form was the Abprotzspritze, in which the portable hand-operated pressure syringe was transported to the place of use on a limber and there was ablated (deposited).

Drawing of the patent specification of Ferdinand Leitenberger's fire pump from before 1855

These syringes, often called “fire engines” in the vernacular , were a luxury for villages, even though the government in the Kingdom of Hanover , for example, put it on paper on October 15, 1781: “It is well known that Königliche Cammer has since then had quite considerable costs to purchase useful in Noht cases effective fire sprinklers used in all offices ... "

Hydrophor from 1894, later supplemented with a portable motor pump in the Tractorium Tractor Museum in Drasenhofen
1859: Advertisement from a Berlin manufacturer of fire engines based on the American model

Wooden pressure sprays were used by the fire brigades in the Duchy of Nassau until the end of the 19th century. Other devices were support ladders , hook ladders , roof ladders and fire buckets. These buckets were made of leather or canvas. It took considerable effort to operate the pressure syringe, because the water had to be poured into the syringe with buckets as there was no suction device on this syringe. It took up to 15 men to pump the water to the scene of the fire. In the middle to the end of this century, pressure and suction fire engines mostly with water feeders and removable valves became popular. Around 1888, the standard provided for the following properties:

  • 100 mm wide cylinders
  • with 30 to 35 double strokes per minute a delivery of 170 to 190  liters of water
  • 8 m suction height
  • 28 to 29 m beam width
  • 23 m beam height
  • Screw connection of the pressure hoses with normal thread
  • The spray unit has to withstand a water pressure of 12  kg per square centimeter for three minutes.

With the technical advancement of fire extinguishers, fire engines increasingly lost their role in active fire fighting . Today, however, many specimens can still be found in museums . Some fire brigades still maintain their partly functional equipment.

literature

  • Matthias Blazek: The fire extinguishing system in the area of ​​the former Principality of Lüneburg from the beginnings to 1900. Adelheidsdorf 2006 ISBN 3-00-019837-7

See also

Web links

Commons : Fire Engines  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Meyer: The old fire regulations of the city of Augsburg . In: Journal of the Historical Association for Swabia . tape 1 , 1874, p. 356-375 .
  2. ↑ Matthias Blazek: Hand pressure syringes as a luxury in the country - In 1864, Celle bought a syringe “from new invention with leather tubes”, Sachsenspiegel 21, Cellesche Zeitung of May 28, 2011.
  3. ↑ Franz-Josef Sehr : The founding years of the volunteer fire brigade Obertiefenbach . In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district 1995 . The district committee of the district of Limburg-Weilburg, Limburg-Weilburg 1994, p. 170-171 .