Fire Sprinkler 101 - a brief history
Henry S. Parmelee of New Haven, CT created and
installed the first closed head fire sprinkler in 1874 to protect The Mathusek
Piano Works. At the time he was the president of piano company. Parmelee
invented the closed head sprinkler in response to exorbitantly high insurance
rates. Parmelee patented his idea and had great success with it in the U.S.
Parmelee called his invention the "automatic fire extinguisher". He then
traveled to Europe to show people that there was finally a way to help stop a
building fire before everything was destroyed.
His invention did not get as much attention as he
had planned. Most people could not afford to install a sprinkler system. Once
Parmelee realized this, he turned his efforts on educating the insurance
companies about his system. He talked about how the sprinkler system would
reduce the loss ratio, thus saving money for the insurance companies. He knew
that he could never succeed in obtaining contracts from the business owners to
install his system unless he could at the same time ensure for them a reasonable
return in the shape of reduced premiums.
In this connection he was fortunate enough to
enlist the sympathies of two men, who both had connections in the insurance
industry. The first of these was Major Hesketh, who, in addition to being a
cotton spinner in a large business in Bolton,
was Chairman of the Bolton Cotton Trades Mutual Insurance Company. The Directors
of this Company and more particularly its Secretary, the late Peter Kevan, took
an interest in Parmelee’s early experiments, and eventually it was to Major
Hesketh, its Chairman, that Parmelee owed his first order for the Sprinkler
Installations which were installed in the Cotton Spinning Mills of John Stones &
Company, at Astley Bridge, Bolton, to be followed soon afterwards by the
Alexandra Mills belonging to Mr. John Butler of the same town.
Although he got a contract through his
efforts, the Bolton Cotton Trades Mutual Insurance Company was not a very big
company outside of its local area. Parmelee needed a wider influence. 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. They had a policy of encouraging risk
management and more particularly the use of the most up-to-date and scientific
apparatus for extinguishing fires. Even though he put tremendous effort and time
into educating the masses on his sprinkler system, by 1883 only about 10
factories were protected by the Parmelee sprinkler.
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