Knowles, Scott Gabriel (Author)
Johns Hopkins University
Leslie, Stuart W.
Edition Details: Advisor: Leslie, Stuart W.
Physical Details: 318 pp.
Language: English
The twin forces of industrialization and urbanization created new American environments in the nineteenth century---environments marked by the ever-present risk of fire. With rising investments on the line and human life in danger, and with traditional methods of handling the threat of fire ill-suited to the modern industrial metropolis, risk created the opportunity for a new invention---fire safety. This dissertation examines the invention of fire safety in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More than a single machine, more than a single body of knowledge, fire safety embodied a collection of fire mitigation technologies, and the work of experts in many different fields. Fire risk acted as a catalyst to creativity in safeguarding the factories of New England and in the wooden cities of post Civil War America. Fire insurance companies were the first institutions to react, gathering the facts on fires and sending inspectors out to assess risks. Following them closely were firemen, architects, engineers, and reform-minded journalists and consumer advocates who also sought to maintain safe conditions in the face of a constantly shifting and increasingly dangerous technological metropolis. These individuals and the institutions they represented formed a loosely organized network of fire safety experts. First, the fire safety experts defined the problems: combustible structures, steam, gas, and electricity, lax building code enforcement, and a constant flow of new consumer products. Then came the solutions, aimed at each risky geography---from the factory to the theater, the skyscraper to the home. The solutions emerged incrementally, but were all in place by the 1930s, including: fireproof construction and tire sprinklers, fire protection engineering education, standardized building inspections, expert disaster investigations, laboratory research into the causes of fire and the performance of materials and devices under stress, and organized pressure on government and the public to demand a fireproof America. In combination, the tire safety experts and their tools gave rise to a highly specific notion of fire safety, largely reliant on technical expertise, private business activity, laboratory research, and constant public demand for relief from the menace of fire.
...MoreDescription Covers both 19th and 20th centuries. Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2003): 624. UMI order no. 3080699.
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