Putting Out Fires in Style: A History of the Fire Extinguisher

Tucked away in corners and niches, invisible in spite of being large and red, the fire extinguisher is one of the most controlled objects in our environment.  Manufacturing standards for fire extinguishers in the USA are stipulated by the Underwriters Laboratories. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) regulates their use and maintenance with a national code; in addition to a fire code formulated by each state. Each extinguisher, therefore, bristles with the seals and certifications, the panels of instruction and information that painstakingly ensure its compliance with all these rules. However, outside the 15 seconds it takes for them to empty their contents (as stipulated by the NFPA), they hold little meaning or personal significance for their users.

This wasn’t always the case, especially in the days when the only way of fighting a fire was to hurl a bucket of water at it. A law passed in 1687 called for every citizen of New York to own one leather bucket for every chimney, clearly marked with the initials of the landlord. These were to be at the disposal of firefighters in the event of a fire, and failure to comply would result in a fine of six shillings. Yet, leather fire buckets from the 1700s were beautifully crafted objects, often carrying a painting of the building or a portrait of the owner. They were clearly objects that people were proud to possess, whether or not the City required it. In 1803, a group of citizens in New York actually took up arms against city officials because their buckets were not being returned to them after the fire had been extinguished. This event has gone down in Fire Department history as the Great Bucket Revolt in the Third Ward.

Part Human, Part Machine, Part Fantasy, Part Real

Download a pdf of illustrative images here.

The sight of Oscar Pistorius running unsettles me. All the visual tropes of the running athlete – bulging calves, stretched tendons, flexing ankles – are conspicuous by their absence. This is because Pistorius’ legs end at the knees. He runs on two curved pieces of carbon fibre that are sold under the name Cheetah Flexfeet. The cutting edge in prosthetic design, modeled on a cheetah’s feet, they will allow the disabled Pistorius to compete against abled runners in the 2012 Olympics. Cheetah Flexfeet are prosthetic limbs that actually work better than human limbs.

I am ashamed to admit it, but all I can think when I see Pistorius is “Cyborg.”

My Pressure Cooker Fascination

Listen to me talk about pressure cookers, or download the file. (4.22 MB .mp3)

1. The ubiquitous aluminium Hawkins pressure cooker
2. The Hawkins Futura, introduced in 1985, became an instant design classic.
3. Typical publicity material that always comes in the pressure cooker carton: in this case, a recipe book for a Futura.
4. How do you open a Hawkins pressure cooker? Opening pressure cookers is never easy for first-timers, no matter what pressure cooker you buy.

Revolution on a Keyboard

IBM’s place in history is secure, as one of the 20th century’s largest drivers of technology and purveyors of the most advanced products in electronics and computing. But their consumer products, even acclaimed seminal ones such as the Selectric typewriter or the IBM PC, never achieved the cult status accorded to the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter, or the Apple iMac G3. How did these objects, from much smaller competitors, create their cults?