Automatic Fire Annihilators.

Automatic Fire Annihilators.

至少，费城分类帐不相信所谓的自动消防员，其中一些已获得专利并向公众提供。分类帐说：

Inventors of fire annihilators, designed to smother flames by the generation of gas, depriving the fire of oxygen, frequently seek to make their apparatus “ automatic ” by the use of fuses, or machinery controlled by heat, so that, should a fire ignite the fuse, or raise the temperature of the room beyond a certain limit, the gas would be generated in sufficient volume to fill the room and smother the fire. The more efficient the fire annihilator may be, however, the more dangerous it may prove to human life. Workmen could not work in a room supplied with such apparatus with much more safety than if the fuse led to a keg of gunpowder. If, to save them from the danger, the apparatus had to be put in working order each night, neglect of that duty would almost certainly follow, while, if the duty was strictly attended to, and a fire extinguished by the apparatus, Firemen or others entering the room might themselves be smothered by the fire annihilating gas. These objections to automatic apparatus apply to all forms which depend upon filling the room with gas to smother the fire or deprive it of oxygen. Fire annihilating compounds, wet or dry, are useful when promptly used by men of sufficient intelligence to know the manner in which they are intended to work, but since the gas they produce is fatal to animal life, they should not oe set up anywhere where they are liable to combine under certain conditions in an occupied room, or in one which may be incautiously entered at any time.