brandweer (13. 602)

Mindful of how Marcus Lininius Crassus financed the First Triumvirate, overseeing the transition of the Republic to an Empire with his enormous wealth earned in large part by controlling the original bucket-brigade in Rome, dispatching slaves ready to extinguish a conflagration but doing little until the distressed owners of the property agreed to a fire-sale and leasing back to the former as tenants, we had thought that the public good of a fire department had just evolved slowly with gradual technological improvements and had not appreciated how maturity came rapidly thanks to a painter and tinkerer in seventeenth century Amsterdam. As the richest city in the world at the time, the capital had recognised and developed a relatively sophisticated system for dealing with burning homes and businesses, a daily occurrence given over to select guilds to patrol with suppression facilitated by easy access to water from the city’s network of canals. After the Great Fire of London, which proved uncontrollable and resulted in the invention of fire insurance, echoing the scheme from Ancient Rome with underwriters installing plaques, fire marks, on covered buildings, and enduring their own losses, artist and inventor Jan van der Heyden suggested improvements to hoses and pumps greatly increasing efficacy. At the expense of his artistic career, van der Heyden engineered a more efficient fire-fighting team, supported by municipalities and illuminated Amsterdam with patrols of gas lamp lighters, which contributed to no blazes in the city.

synchronoptica

one year ago: gendered characters in children’s literature (with synchronoptica), ending the prohibition on churches endorsing political candidates plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: the 1948 London Games plus the Thirteen Colonies’ attempt to avoid open conflict with Britain (1775)

three years ago: everything under the Sun, Jupiter’s moons plus more fortifications along the US-Mexico border

four years ago: the Roswell incident (1947), AI ethics plus the animations of Sam Lyon 

five years ago: your daily demon, a lexical database of marine life, uncombable hair syndrome, the first certified Gold Record plus the death of Shelley (1822)

six years ago: the martyrdom of St Kilian plus the Upper Moselle