Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/620

604 for fire extinguishment that has been invented since the steam fire engine was introduced. There have been improvements in engines, ladders, hose, and rolling stock of all kinds, but of new inventions, original in all respects and of practical utility, there have been none for over twenty years."

Other towers were built for different cities, Boston buying one in 1882 that was destroyed in the great fire of Thanksgiving day, 1889. A few years later Messrs. Ashworth and Petrie, of the Chicago Fire Department, had built in the repair shops a telescoping brass tower of similar description, which is in use to-day in the Chicago Department. In 1888 Chief Hale, of the Kansas City Fire Department, invented a water tower that practically replaced



the Greenleaf. The Kansas City Fire Department Supply Company took up the manufacture of the new machine. Two telescoping square steel shafts rest on trunnions at the forward end of the truck and a chemical engine takes the place of a hand-screw in raising the tower into position. The inner shaft, lined with hose, is raised by cable and pulleys, drawing after it a length of hose that is already attached to receiving nozzles at the base. The delivery nozzle is under perfect control by the aid of guide ropes. The tower is made in different sizes, varying from thirty to sixty feet in height.

In 1893 the Fire Extinguisher Manufacturing Company, of Chicago, placed on the market the Champion water tower, that differs essentially from the Hale tower. This was the invention of their superintendent, Mr. E. Steck, who has done much important work in the way of ladder trucks, chemical engines, and other fire appliances. Hand power replaces the chemical engine in