"Take care of your fire and candle" went the cry of London's night patrol during the 17th Century. Fire was a serious problem since there was almost no way to extinguish large blazes. At that time, fire fighting either involved pulling down a burning house (or blowing up neighbouring buildings to prevent the fire spreading) or the use of buckets or a brass "squirt" gun, an oversize syringe that did little to quench a fire.

In 1708, The House of Commons passed the Parish Pump Act ordering that every parish must keep a water pump to help extinguish fires. However, it was another 12 years before English inventor Richard Newsham came up with an effective design for a fire-fighting water pump.

His pump consisted of an open trough on wheels. The trough was filled with water using buckets. Inside the trough were two pistons attached to two large handles. Pumping the handles up and down squeezed the pistons and pushed the water out of a swivelling copper spout on top of the pump. The key element of Newsham's design was a 'gimble' - a chain mechanism that allowed the pistons to remain vertical while pumping. This made the pump far more powerful than other designs.

The fact that the trough was mounted on wheels meant it could be pulled to the site of the blaze like a cart. The result was the first truly effective fire engine that could race to a blazing house and squirt 400 litres of water per minute at flames over 40 metres away.

By 1721 Newsham had built fire pumps that could be operated by up to 16 people. So successful was his design that similar fire pumps remained in operation up until the 1930s.