Fire Safe Life – A Fire Protection Collective

Archive for February, 2010

We want to welcome all to try our new Fire Safe Life forum. The link is to the right at the top of the page and marked FSL Forum. We hope this is a place for all to share and help each other. For now it is a place to ask us questions. We will make every effort to help. If we don’t know, we have lots of friends in the industry to ask. If you have ideas for an article you would like to see post it in the forum. We are always looking for items of interest.

Thanks and Enjoy

The FSL Team

The History of Automatic Sprinkler Protection
Part 3 – Henry Pamelee

Henry S. Parmelee is credited with inventing the first practical automatic sprinkler. Objecting to the high insurance rates he determined there had be a way to protect his piano factory that would reduce the rates.

His first attempt was not practical as it used a cord holding a spring mechanism which, when burned would release the device. Upon showing the head to an acquaintance it was suggested to him that the device should operate by heat as well. His first patent was for a perforated head with a spring holding am internal valve shut and released by a fusible link. It was complicated and never known to have been used.

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Self Regulation

Are we victims of government regulation? What happened to our independence?

When I started in the fire sprinkler industry 33 years ago as a designer I had no idea who the fire marshal was. I seldom if ever submitted any drawings to the local government. When I did it was usually to the fire department and all they wanted to know was where the fire dept connection and alarm bells were.

Prior to that time the fire protection industry was self regulating. Now days it seems that not a news broadcast goes by without some call for more government regulation. But it was not always so. And without the development of a system of self regulation, there would be nothing available for today’s government to use to regulate us. There were many important developments that paved the way for government.
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