The Outbreak of Fire

The growth of urban density in the eighteenth century went in parallel with the development of artisanal and manufacturing activities, entailing a widespread use of fireplaces, boilers, but also new furnaces working with high temperatures – e.g., in glasswork – that increased the hazards caused by fire. The necessity of managing fire on a daily basis fostered the emergence of new methods and new technical processes. By focusing on the nature, the degrees of fire, and the types of materials, a great number of inventions were proposed to act on the outbreak of fire, drawing upon new knowledge of combustion and chemistry. In this paper, I will explore the inventors’ attention towards this specific temporality of fire, namely the crucial moment when a fire started, which stimulated research on prevention strategies, fireproof materials, and fire suppression systems

Architectural engineering · Combustion · Epistemology · Forensic engineering · Temporality · Chemistry · Engineering · Fire effects on ecosystems · History · Philosophy