Description
More complex and imposing than any other vehicle in the British emergency services, the fire engine has a long and interesting history. The earliest water pumps had been developed by the 18th century – basic manual pumps that had to be hauled around by people or horses, and were often only used on fire-insured premises. In the 19th and 20th centuries horse-drawn, steam-powered fire engines, and eventually motorised fire engines, came to revolutionise the service. In this illustrated introduction, Eddie Baker charts the history of fire engines and their variants, and the increasingly complex equipment they have carried, such as high-rise ladders and high-pressure hoses.
