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Firefighting dates back many centuries. The Egyptians
utilized hand-operated wooden pumps in the second century
B.C. A leather hose was developed in Holland in the 1600's.
The fire service began the colonial United States in Boston in about 1680 when the first paid fire department was established. The first fire departments were bucket brigades, teams of people passing leather buckets full of water down a human chain, the water thrown on the fire at the end of the chain, and the empty buckets passed back to the water source. Using the human chain, a continuous supply of buckets could be rotated through, providing an almost constant, if meager, supply of water. Volunteer fire departments began with Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1735. Yes, the same Ben Franklin who signed the Constitution and established the first lending library also founded the first volunteer fire department. Ben's concern was that fires started too easily and spread too rapidly, a fact that arose from the colonists' widespread use of thatched roofs. Fires were started by embers from chimneys and lightening, and spread rapidly from house to house. While investigating ways to prevent lightening from striking thatched-roof houses and other buildings, Ben invented the lightening rod. He conducted experiments with a kite flown during thunderstorms... and we all know what discovery that led to! George Washington imported the first fire engine from England in about 1765. This engine was probably a hand-pumper, requiring men to move the engine to the fire and operate the pumps with levers to direct water through the hoses. The engine was given to the Alexandria, Virginia fire company, where Washington was a volunteer firefighter himself. By the late 1800's horse-drawn, steam-driven fire pumpers
were in widespread use. The steam pumpers were replaced in
the early 1900's with the advent of the gasoline engine.
Since then, advances in engineering and technology have led
to continuous improvements in firefighter's equipment and
apparatus.
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