The story of
the fire engineering department of Mather & Platt Ltd
is somewhat different from the record of the other
departments, for in taking up this line of production the
firm was following a distinctive course of its own. In
its early stages the Automatic Sprinkler story recorded
in brief as part of our earlier chronological survey
reads more like a romance than a chapter in economic of
technical history, although there was little romance in
the menace of fire which threatened the Lancashire Cotton
mills in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The mills had interiors constructed largely of wood; gas
lighting was usually employed; large quantities of oil
were used for the lubrication of machinery; and cotton
fluff itself was highly inflammable. This combination of
circumstances made for serious conflagrations, the
frequency of which became alarming. Indeed Mather &
Platt had its own fire in 1852, the first year of the
partnership; a blaze which had to be put out by men using
buckets of water, (1) but neither buckets of
water nor other hand appliances could cope with the fire
situation in the spinning industry and fire losses were
of such magnitude that Insurance Companies were reluctant
to cover premises in the cotton trade. As far
back as 1788 Carey an Englishman had experimented with a
heat-operated device for discharging water through a
system of pipes to extinguish a fire. In 1809 Congreve
invented another perforated pipe system and three years
later, a valve sealed by a fusible solder, whilst in 1864
Major Stewart Harrison of the 1st Engineer (London)
Volunteers, gave to the world the first Automatic
Sprinkler Head, his design being as a matter of fact
superior to many that followed it. As so often happens,
however, it was not to the country of its birth that this
epoch-making invention owed its practical development,
but to America, where in 1874 Henry S. Parmelee, a piano
manufacturer of New England placed an automatic sprinkler
on the market, and finally Frederick Grinnell, another
American, the head of the Providence Gas, Steam and Water
Pipe Company, patented the first reliable and.
commercially successful automatic sprinkler head in 1882. The
Automatic Sprinkler and Fire Alarm System the success of
which was assured after the invention of the
“Grinnell” head is a device for extinguishing a
fire in its early stages by the use of water and,
simultaneously, sounding an alarm to summon such human
aid as may be required to turn off the water after the
sprinkler equipment has performed its task of
extinguishing the fire. It accomplishes its first purpose
the extinction of the fire by discharging water, in
proportion to the nature and extent of an outbreak,
directly on to the conflagration. This is brought about
automatically immediately the fire causes a rise in
temperature sufficient to operate the sensitive controls
(known as sprinkler heads) and before the conflagration
has time to get out of hand. The second function of the
system, that of sounding the alarm, is equally positive,
as the ringing of the alarm gong is caused by the action
of water flowing through the pipes leading to the open
sprinklers.
Under
normal conditions the discharge of water from the
sprinklers is sufficient to effect complete extinction of
the fire, but if, by reason of the presence of some
obstruction which provides an “umbrella” for
the fire and prevents the discharge from falling direct
on to the seat of the outbreak, the fire is not
completely extinguished, the shower of water from the
sprinkler is sufficient to hold the blaze in check. Under
these conditions sprinklers prevent the spread of fire
pending the arrival of the fire brigade. We have
seen earlier how 1883 was the key year in the history of
the Fire Engineering Department. Two important events
took place. First, as has been mentioned earlier, William
Mather visited the United States of America to
investigate American methods of technical education and
in the course of his travels met Frederick Grinnell, who
had just patented his new "Grinnell" automatic
sprinkler head. Grinnell was so amazed and delighted that
an Englishman should give his time and pay his own
expenses to travel in search of knowledge for the benefit
of his country, without a hope of personal reward, that
he offered William Mather the sole selling rights for the
“Grinnell” sprinkler for the whole of the world
excepting the territories of the United States of America
and Canada. The offer was accepted and Mather & Platt
thus had their first ‘baptism’ in the business
of fire engineering. Second, two young men, Ralph Dowson
and John Taylor, who two years earlier had witnessed a
demonstration by George F. Parmelee of the automatic
sprinkler head invented by his brother Henry in the
market square at Bolton, started their partnership in the
fire Engineering business. We have already seen how these
young men who had worked together for the Chemical Fire
Engineering Company of Bolton, had, in the early days of
their partnership, designed and placed on the market the
first two-gallon “Simplex” Soda-Acid Fire
Extinguisher substantially the same in basic principle as
hand appliances in use today. Within
twelve months they patented and installed their own
“Simplex” automatic sprinkler, which was
abandoned when they made an arrangement with William
Mather to market the Grinnell system. John Taylor soon
realised that the success of the Fire Engineering
business did not depend upon the fundamental soundness of
the automatic sprinkler idea or the superiority of the
Grinnell head. He recognised that while the sprinkler
might ultimately become established by reason of its
intrinsic value as a fire-fighting device its general
adoption would be a slow process unless he could break
down the reluctance of mill owners to spend money on
protecting their premises. Many owners of Cotton mills, regarded in the early days as most likely customers for automatic sprinklers by reason of colossal fire losses in their industry, were not unduly perturbed by numerous disasters in their midst. Even though outbreaks of fire were assuming alarming proportions were not the owners “covered by insurance”? They paid an annual premium for Insurance against loss by fire, regarding it, though heavy, as a fixed charge against their profits and feeling a measure of financial security because one mill burned down could be replaced by another out of the proceeds of insurance. Fortunately there were some officials in the Insurance world who appreciated the value of sprinklers when viewed from the financial angle. One of the most
enthusiastic of this small band was John Wormald who,
like John Taylor and Ralph Dowson had witnessed the early
Parmelee demonstration at Bolton. He ultimately joined
the business of Dowson & Taylor and became one of the
world’s greatest Salesmen for Automatic Sprinklers
but not before he had played a considerable part in
convincing Fire Insurance Companies that the way to
increase profits was to encourage the installation of
automatic sprinklers by allowing a rebate on insurance
premiums in respect of every building protected in
accordance with accepted standards. John Wormald had
been a surveyor for the Mutual Fire Insurance Corporation
of Bolton, the first insurance company officially to
acknowledge that the automatic sprinkler was the answer
to the fire losses in cotton mills. Acting on behalf of
his company John Wormald produced the first set of rules
governing the manner in which automatic sprinklers should
be installed in order to qualify for the relief on fire
insurance premiums which the company was prepared to
allow. In his record of this event John Wormald wrote:
“On October 22nd, 1885, I copyrighted and published,
the first code of Sprinkler Rules that had been given to
the world, and these were based on the data and
experience provided, by the previous three years of
experiment and practice. So saturated was my mind with
the subject in all its detail that I well remember
composing the whole pamphlet on a Sunday afternoon
without having to refer to any notes. I did not expect
that these regulations would find general acceptance, but
as a matter of fact not only were they adopted by the
British Tariff Companies, but in America they paid us the
compliment of taking them as the groundwork of their own
Rules subsequently published”. The
established rules of the British Fire Offices Committee
now universally accepted as the standard to which all
sprinkler installations must comply stand, in all basic
principles, exactly as drafted by John Wormald in
collaboration with John Taylor. In his book entitled.
“The Story of the Introduction to England of the
Automatic Sprinkler”, writing of the days when he
was on the staff of the Mutual Fire Insurance Corporation
and before he joined the Dowson Taylor organisation, John
Wormald makes the following reference to the work of John
Taylor:-“As was to be expected, the advent of the
Automatic Sprinkler attracted the attention of Fire
Engineers who had hitherto been engaged in the
manufacture of non-automatic appliances, and in the
succeeding years there appeared on the British market
numerous types of new sprinklers, each claiming to be an
improvement upon Mr. Grinnell’s invention”. Of
the many devices submitted for examination three British
Sprinklers were deemed, of sufficient merit to justify
their endorsement, viz. the “Simplex” (Dowson
& Taylor, Bolton), the “Witter” (Witter
& Son, Bolton), and the “Titan” (J.H. Lynde
and George Mills, Radcliffe). The
“Simplex” was a sealed or non-valve device of
the Parmelee type, though much more sensitive in its
operation, and had the great advantage of being placed on
the market in conjunction with the well known Variable
Pressure Alarm Valve invented by Mr. John Taylor. This
valve is operated by the flow of the water, and is
constructed so as to prevent false alarms being given by
any variations of pressure in the main supply pipes. When the
water pressure has achieved an equilibrium above and
below the Valve, the clack, which is of differential
area, drops by its own weight upon a seating on which is
grooved an annular chamber with an outlet pipe to a small
water motor, to the spindle of which are attached
revolving hammers that strike a loud-sounding gong. In
practice the opening of a Sprinkler Head reduced the
pressure above the Valve, which is lifted by the upward
flow from the main supplies, and so long as this
continues, water passes to the motor and the gong sounds
a continuous alarm. In the clack of the valve there is a
small compensating valve which takes up any violent
fluctuation of pressure without lifting the Valve itself,
thus obviating false alarms”. “Next to
Mr. Grinnell‘s invention this ingenious Valve of Mr.
Taylor’s remains the most important advance in the
development and practice of Automatic Fire Extinction.
Previously there was nothing better than a rude and
clumsy clockwork arrangement consisting of a cord wound
round a drum with a weight attached which, when released,
caused a hammer to strike a gong just as in an 8-day
clock. When the weight reached the ground the alarm
ceased. Mr. Taylor’s new Valve was speedily adopted
by Mr Grinnell himself and applied all over America. It
is still an integral part of every Sprinkler
Installation.” The patent
rights covering John Taylor’s Alarm Valve were later
granted to the ‘Grinnell’ Corporation in
America, and his alarm valve continues in use to this
day. We thus
have early signs of the engineering ability, which John
Taylor brought to bear on many problems in the later
history of Mather & Platt Ltd. The early sprinkler
days were not, however, without their troubles. Ralph
Dowson once staged a sprinkler demonstration in Calcutta.
He built a wooden house and equipped it with sprinklers.
The Mayor, with leading civil servants and businessmen
were invited and attended the demonstration. Eventually a
fire was lit in the house, which proceeded, to
everyone’s alarm, to burn to the ground. The water
supply was from a town’s main, which was blocked: it
had pressure but no volume. This was an exceptional
demonstration: most of the displays staged and they soon
became famous, were startling and impressive in their
effectiveness. We may be sure that the lessons of the
incident in Calcutta were not lost on Dowson-Taylor or
their friends in the Insurance world: they provided early
proof of the wisdom of having secondary water supplies
whenever possible. The sprinkler
system is not the sort of apparatus that demands constant
technical changes. There have, however, been considerable
improvements since 1900. The original
“Grinnell” sprinkler head had as its operating
element three metal parts soldered together. Excellent as
the soldered sprinkler was, atmospheric corrosion could,
in certain circumstances, be disastrous, and a search was
made to find a sprinkler composed of operating parts
which were immune to atmospheric corrosion, In 1902 a
patent for glass bulb sprinklers was granted. Early
development work was carried out with bulbs obtained from
abroad, but from 1907 bulbs for further experimental work
were produced in England. Experimental bulb sprinklers
were installed in Park Works in 1913, and in 1920
development work was resumed by Mather & Platt
technicians in the newly established Research Department.
As a result a spherical bulb automatic sprinkler was
invented, which was approved by the Insurance companies
in 1922. The Quartzoid
bulb automatic sprinkler was approved three years later.
The full story of the perfection of the quartzoid bulb
sprinkler would contain many stories of frustration and
countless disappointments as well as a mass of technical
information outside the scope of this history but it is
of interest to record that one of the band of
enthusiastic workers who carried research on this problem
to a successful conclusion was the son of one of the
first employees of Dowson & Taylor. In an earlier
chapter reference has been made to the technical ability
of Edward Roberts as a sprinkler engineer, and it is
fitting that Arthur Roberts, the son of this pioneer
technician should follow in his father’s footsteps
and play a noteworthy part in producing a new type of
head which, by reason of its strength and resistance to
corrosion, is now accepted as the sprinkler for all
situations. The order book
for automatic sprinklers takes the reader into all parts
of the world and into the premises of business firms
whose names are household words. It is a far cry to the
day when Cotton Mills of Lancashire were regarded as the
limit of Sprinkler protection and Grinnell equipment is
now to be found in every branch of industry and commerce,
even to underground mine workings and to luxury liners
like the “Queen Mary” and the “Queen
Elizabeth”. But sprinklers
are not the only products of the Fire Engineering
Department, which has expanded greatly since Dowson,
Taylor & Co. Ltd, moved from Blackfriars Bridge to
Park Works in 1902. The pioneering spirit continued to be
John Taylor and he was ably assisted by Edward Roberts
whose energies were concentrated on the technical work of
the department. Among the wide
range of products of the Department are automatic
electrically driven fire pumps, necessary adjuncts to
many sprinkler installations. The development of these
pumps brought into play three sides of the company's
business, the pump department, the electrical department
and the fire department. There were obvious advantages in
maintaining such complementary lines of activity. As part of the
policy of curtailing loss by fire John Taylor and his
colleagues in the Fire Engineering division turned their
attention to the production of an efficient
fire-resisting door. While striving to secure the
universal adoption of sprinklers as a logical means of
cutting fire loss by extinguishing each outbreak
automatically they realised that there were bound to be
many buildings in which sprinklers would not be
installed. To minimise the fire loss in such buildings
the provision of fire resisting doors, to seal off one
part of a building in which fire occurred from other
rooms to which the conflagration might spread through
communicating doors, was a logical step. Up to about 1890 most fire doors were constructed of iron, although every fire expert knew that such doors could not be satisfactory because the heat of the fire was radiated through them or caused them to warp and buckle, leaving gaps through which flames could pass. Further, such doors were liable to tear themselves from their fastenings and so allow the fire to pass; or, alternatively, and equally unfortunately, jammed and did not allow the firemen to gain access to the seat of a fire. In 1890 Dowson
& Taylor introduced from America an armoured fire
door, constructed of pinewood boards of a given thickness
nailed across each other in a special way, and finally
sheathed in tinned steel plates, joined together
according to a special process which allowed the plates
to expand under the influence of heat and yet remain
airtight. The idea of using a wooden door to resist the
spread of fire met with as much ridicule as had
Wilkinson’s idea of an iron boat a hundred years
before. Today, however, the Armoured Fire Door stands
proved by its performance in saving many buildings from
destruction by fire and it is in universal use. Fire
fighting experts recommend it, and architects specify it
just as confidently as they specify brick for walls and
glass for windows. In order to enable the company to meet
a growing demand the manufacture of fire resisting doors
was transferred in 1906 to a separate works at Preston. The
advance in technical knowledge subsequently resulted in
the development of a Composite door, manufactured of
steel and asbestos. This door is used where it is
necessary to have a fire door, which harmonises with its
surroundings. Although the composite door has good fire
resisting qualities it cannot give the results proved by
actual fire experience in the use of the armoured door. A somewhat
parallel line of manufacture has been the production,
since 1925, of steel rolling shutters, Although the
majority of steel rolling shutters supplied by Mather
& Platt Ltd., are installed for the normal purpose of
providing access to a building for which they have many
obvious advantages over wooden doors. They have fire
resisting qualities, which bring them within the orbit of
the fire engineering department. Furthermore, when
Rolling Shutters are required for the definite purpose of
providing a fire-resisting curtain they can be made to
close automatically in case of fire and to comply with
the requirements of the Fire Offices Committee. The
Company pioneered the installation of electrically
operated shutters and is one of the largest producers of
steel rolling shutters in the country. Tens of thousands
of shutters have been manufactured and installed in all
parts of the world and under all conditions; located from
the equator to the Polar regions and varying in
application from a loading bay in an engineering works to
installation on board ship including the famous aircraft
carrier the “Ark Royal’ which was equipped with
twenty Mather & Platt shutters at the time of the
notorious nightly broadcast “Where is the Ark
Royal?" Wags ‘in the know’ at Park Works
were saying “They must be deaf, there are enough
steel rolling shutters on her to hear her rattling along
anywhere between Shanghai and Peru”. Another product
of the Department closely identified with the early days
in the sprinkler business is the cast iron storage tank,
built from standardised cast iron plates. This was
designed originally as an adjunct to a sprinkler
installation at a time when most sprinkler systems were
fed by gravity and the erection of an overhead tank in
one piece would have presented considerable difficulty
but it is now employed for many other industrial
purposes. In 1932
Mather & Platt Ltd. entered the field of Industrial
heating when they commenced to manufacture the
‘Thermolier’ Unit Heater which John Taylor had been used with
great advantage in many modern American factories. His
early model was based on the successful American design
but it was later revised to conform to British Standards.
Although British industrial conservatism formed a serious
barrier to the initial acceptance of the Unit heater
principle “Thermolier” heaters have new become
firmly established. The most far
reaching twentieth century fire fighting development,
however, with the possible exception of the quartzoid
bulb Sprinkler, has been the invention of a new system of
extinguishing fires involving oil and other inflammable
liquids by the use of water. Changes in the nature of
materials used in many industries and the increased use
of lubricating oil and diesel oil in industry as a whole
have brought with them additional fire risks unknown
forty or fifty years ago. One means of localising oil
fire and yet allowing it to burn without spreading or
damaging surrounding plant until the source of ignition
had been shut off, was discovered in 1931. The Protector
Spray System employed an even distribution of a cooling
element with the maximum conservation of water. In the same year
an entirely new system of protection for use against
fires involving oils and oil products was devised by
Mather & Platt Ltd at Park Works. The new system was
given the trade name “Mulsifyre”, coined from
the words “Emulsion” and “Fire”,
the scientific idea behind the system being that water
alone is used, applied in such a manner as to convert the
surface of the burning liquid into a non-burning,
oil-in-water emulsion. Fires are thus put out by
fundamental means i.e. the temporary conversion of an
inflammable liquid into a substance which cannot burn. For many years
the extinction of oil fires was one of the unsolved
problems of the fire engineer. The almost universally
accepted agent for suppressing fires, water was not
only’ regarded, as useless but as positively
dangerous when applied to oil fires by the methods known
before the development of the ‘Mulsifyre’
system. One
positive step towards solving the problem of
extinguishing oil fires was taken when foam was invented
forty years ago. Foam does not burn and is lighter than
oil, so that when flooded over the burning surface to a
depth of several inches it brings about the extinction of
fire by a smothering action. After the inert gas, carbon
dioxide had become commercially available in
liquidified form, contained under high pressure in strong
steel cylinders; it afforded an additional method of
smothering oil fires located in closed situations. The staff of the
Research Department of Mather & Platt Ltd, under the
leadership of Dr. S.F. Barclay, made an entirely new
approach to the subject, arising out of some years of
study of emulsions and their formation. It is a fact well
known to scientists that an oil-in-water emulsion is
non-inflammable, for the reason that the oil is divided
into minute globules separated from each other and
covered by a film of water. To form such an emulsion, the
surface of the oil must be violently agitated in order to
bring about its disassociation into tiny globules. Under the
Mulsifyre system this is accomplished by bombarding the
oil with water discharged under pressure through
specially designed nozzles called “Projectors”.
Thus it will be
seen that the “Mulsifyre” system goes to the
root of the problem of oil fire extinction and because it
deals with the cause, and not merely with the effect,
emulsifying equipment is now accepted as a sure and
reliable method of extinguishing all fires which involve
inflammable liquids. The process was
first applied commercially in 1933 and since ‘that
date hundreds of fixed “Mulsifyre”
installations have been placed in commission. In
application the Mulsifyre projectors are mounted on
suitable pipe lines served with water at the necessary
pressure; they may be located close to or at a
considerable height above the oil surface, as
circumstances may require. The equipment is normally
brought into operation automatically in the event of an
outbreak of fire, but manual control is provided to meet
certain special conditions. The system has been patented
in the principal countries of the world. The chief applications of the Mulsifyre system have been in electricity power station and sub-stations. Many installations have been supplied to paint and varnish works, oil refineries and dry cleaning and waterproofing factories in many countries, including North and South America. A well-equipped demonstration ground at Park Works, designed to display the capabilities of the Mulsifyre system under realistic conditions, has been visited by many thousands of people from all parts of the world. The dramatic extinction of large and intense oil fires, within two or three seconds of the water being turned on, never fails to make a lasting impression on the mind of the observer. Although the basic principles behind the Automatic Sprinkler and Alarm system - when applied to ordinary commercial fire hazards remain as they were when Dowson & Taylor erected their first installation nearly seventy years ago, there has been a steady advance in the design of the component parts of an installation. In addition, the application of the Sprinkler system has been modified to provide protection against fire in some special risks. For example the Multiple Jet system provides an even distribution of water from several points simultaneously in order to control a fire which may break out in a situation where the presence of obstructions might prevent the discharge from one sprinkler from reaching the seat of a fire. Another variation of the Standard sprinkler system is the provision of external drenchers, designed to provide a curtain of water over the doors and. windows of a protected building so that flames are not able to pass from adjacent premises which may be on fire. One of the
most interesting of modern advances in fire fighting is a
new technique which has been developed to cope with the
danger of fire in modern aircraft hangars. The rapid
growth in the use of large passenger and freight carrying
aircraft in recent years has meant a corresponding
increase in the demand for more and more hangar space.
Modern aircraft hangars are of necessity spacious and
lofty buildings. Like the aircraft they are intended, to
house, they are expensive to build, and their cost and
importance demands that every precaution should be taken
to guard against destruction by fire. This object is achieved, by the Automatic Duo-Control Deluge system developed by Mather & Platt Ltd. Under this system each large hangar is divided into a number of zones and in the event of fire, water is discharged automatically over the whole of an affected area through a series of open drencher heads. Standard “Grinnell” heads are employed only for the detection of fire and a supplementary detector system known by the trade name of “Fyretron" is also employed; hence the term duo-control. From this it will be seen that the Fire Engineering Department, continuing to put its trust in water as the most effective medium with which to attack a fire, is facing the challenge of the future as confidently as it faced the challenge of seventy years ago. |
A History of Mather & Platt
Ltd.