Fire sprinkler
[1][2][3] In 1812, British inventor Sir William Congreve patented a manual sprinkler system using perforated pipes along the ceiling.
[6] It was not until a short time later that, as a result of a large furniture factory that repeatedly burned down, Hiram Stevens Maxim was consulted on how to prevent a recurrence and invented the first automatic fire sprinkler.
[14] He was the president of Mathusek Piano Works, and invented his sprinkler system in response to exorbitantly high insurance rates.
Parmelee patented his idea and had great success with it in the U.S., calling his invention the "automatic fire extinguisher".
He knew that he could never succeed in obtaining contracts from the business owners to install his system unless he could ensure for them a reasonable return in the form of reduced premiums.
Hesketh got Parmelee his first order for sprinkler installations in the cotton spinning mills of John Stones & Company, at Astley Bridge, Bolton.
He found this influence in James North Lane, the manager of the Mutual Fire Insurance Corporation of Manchester.
This company was founded in 1870 by the Textile Manufacturers' Associations of Lancashire and Yorkshire as a protest against high insurance rates.
It caused the valve and its seat to move outwards simultaneously until the solder joint was completely severed.
Automatic fire sprinklers utilizing frangible bulbs follow a standardized color-coding convention indicating their operating temperature.
RTI is a measure of how thermally responsive the heat-responsive element of the sprinkler is, measured as the time needed to raise the temperature of the sprinkler bulb to 63% of the temperature of the hot air stream times the square root of the velocity of the air stream.
[23] The term quick response refers to the listing of the entire sprinkler (including spacing, density and location) not just the fast responding releasing element.
[29] Under standard testing procedures (135 °C air at a velocity of 2.5 m/s), a 68 °C sprinkler bulb will break within 7 to 33 seconds, depending on the RTI.
"The concept is that fast response of sprinklers can produce an advantage in a fire if the response is accompanied by an effective discharge density — that is, a sprinkler spray capable of fighting its way down through the fire plume in sufficient quantities to suppress the burning fuel package.
