Among the earliest attempts to organize fire-fighting were the ancient Egyptians' gathering of volunteer fire-fighters and the Romans' use of slaves stationed in strategic locations to spot and douse fires. The Greeks and Romans even devised primitive fire engines--small human-powered water pumps mounted on wheels or skids. But for many centuries fire fighting essentially consisted of little more than bucket brigades. The great London fire of 1666, which decimated nearly thirteen thousand buildings, drew attention to the need for preparedness in the face of fire emergencies. Hand-operated pumps on wheels drawn by humans came into use, replaced in the l800s by horse-drawn wagons. These early pumps could produce streams of water of no more than fifty ft. (l5.25 m). In 1830, John Giraud of Baltimore invented a pump with a chamber of compressed air that ultimately was capable of boosting the stream of water delivered through the...