Historical Inventions and Innovations
Before the modern fire hydrant, a primitive fire suppression system was to bury a wooden water pipe (often no more than a hollowed out log) along the streets.
In the event of a fire, teams would dig down to the buried wooden water main and auger a hole in the pipe, and out would come the water to fill buckets. Then a bucket brigade would be started to extinguish the fire. When the teams were finished, they would need to hammer a wooden plug into the log to stop the flow of water. Hence the origin of the term “fire plug.”
Read more about this topic: Fire Hydrant
Famous quotes containing the words historical, inventions and/or innovations:
“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)