Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/505

Rh and it was stored away, and New York's fire protection was limited again to the old hand tubs.

Such a marked improvement as a steam fire engine, however, could not long remain unadopted by the progressive people of this country, even though their protectors, the volunteer firemen, insisted that hand power was the only means that should be used. In 1852 Messrs. Latta & Shawk, of Cincinnati, placed a steam boiler and cylinder in connection with the pumps of a hand engine belonging to the Cincinnati department and mounted the whole contrivance on wheels and frame. A public trial was made of this crude affair, and it worked very successfully. In the short time of four minutes and ten seconds steam was raised from cold water, the engine started, and water discharged through three hundred and fifty feet of hose to a distance of one hundred and thirty feet from the nozzle. Although this exhibition was naturally looked upon with dislike by the volunteer firemen, the city government was greatly pleased and immediately contracted with the makers for a complete steam fire engine. This was built and put in service with a company organized and supported by the city. Thus the first paid fire company in the world to operate by steam power was brought into existence.

The volunteers made great opposition to the change in affairs, but the chief engineer of the paid department, Miles Greenwood, was so energetic and persevering that with the help of other level-headed men the opposition was overcome and the trouble adjusted. To Mr. Greenwood is due much of the credit for introducing the steam fire engine into this country. The firm of Latta & Shawk passed into different hands, until controlled by the celebrated Ahrens Manufacturing Company, which in turn has been absorbed by the American Fire Engine Company.

The fame of the Cincinnati engines spread, and other cities endeavored to introduce the system, always meeting with the most violent opposition from the volunteers. The press, however, advocated the change, and called for its universal introduction. A Boston gentleman, having visited Cincinnati, wrote in the Boston Transcript of August 7, 1857, that he was amazed at the efficiency of the Cincinnati department, and believed it had demonstrated the impossibility of extensive conflagrations. He was disgusted to return to Boston and find men and boys dragging hand tubs to fires, after having discarded a steam fire engine without giving it a fair trial. But the steam fire engine was bound to come. Chicago and other western cities closely followed Cincinnati by organizing paid departments equipped with steam engines. The more intelligent volunteers in the east began to see the error of their ways, and replaced their hand engines with the more modern apparatus. Boston was the first of the eastern cities to organize