The firefighting system of the Van der Heyden brothers in 17th century Amsterdam

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-amsterdam-invented-the-fire-department/

by zdw • 19 days ago

136 37 19 days ago

dang• 19 days ago

[stub for offtopicness]

[[Come on you guys - you should know better than to post lazy internet ripostes to shallowly provocative titles. This is a fine and interesting historical article.]]

[[[I've edited the title now so it starts fewer fires]]]

decimalenough• 19 days ago

Invented? Ancient Rome would like a word: the Vigiles Urbani date back to 6 AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_in_ancient_Rome

And private firefighters were active even earlier, with Crassus particularly notorious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus

stingraycharles• 19 days ago

Yeah the title is clickbaity, a more accurate title would be that they improved and/or scaled it.

sph• 19 days ago

Didn’t know that; in modern italian vigili urbani is the traffic police.

asmodeuslucifer• 19 days ago

Seriously Crassus. I know the idea of a rich bastard who starts fires and then makes money putting them out is unbelievable in our modern age but it was a real thing.

doginasuit• 19 days ago

The article describes several actual inventions that are still the foundation of modern fire departments. It goes without saying that they didn't come up with the idea of organized firefighting.

irishcoffee• 19 days ago

[flagged]

firesteelrain• 19 days ago

There were many private establishments going back to Ancient Rome.

Fully paid, professional municipal departments came in 1853 Cincinnati.

So I guess it depends on how you define it. US gets a lot of credit for the idea of a “fire department”

laurencerowe• 19 days ago

James Braidwood established one in Edinburgh in 1824.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braidwood

Alien1Being• 19 days ago

[flagged]

DonHopkins3• 19 days ago

What have the Romans ever done for us?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ

vanderZwan4• 19 days ago

Funny, I'm Dutch and have an arts degree so obviously the name Van der Heyden is familiar to me, but I didn't know he was also an engineer who modernized our firefighting systems.

Having said that, "Dutch golden age painter invented better way to pump water out of the Amsterdam canals" sounds more like someone tried to cram as many stereotypes about the Dutch into a sentence than an accurate summary of something that actually happened, haha. I'm surprised it's real history.

vrganj• 19 days ago

You sure he wasn't also a wearing his clogs while biking to his tulip farm before going home to make stroopwafels while eating Gouda?

jb19912• 18 days ago

And to be more specific, he was biking home on his fatbike.

benj1112• 19 days ago

Called a ‘snake’ (slang in Dutch)

Disappointingly this isn't the origin of the English word slang. It seems to be of Viking origin.

hnarn• 18 days ago

”Viking” is not a language, it’s not even an ethnic group. The language you’re probably referring to is Old Norse.

OJFord• 18 days ago

It is (was) a mechanism for language introduction though, to be fair.

benj1112• 18 days ago

It's a culture.

If I said a word came from the hacker culture, is it relevant that hacker isn't a language and hackers aren't an ethnic group?

Someone• 18 days ago

Colloquially, it is. See for example BBC’s recent headline “The Viking word hidden in the Declaration of American Independence” (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260625-the-ancient-word...)

ahartmetz• 18 days ago

Yeah, and "boomslang" means "tree snake". It's not some obscure possibly hip hop related subculture jargon.

DonHopkins3• 19 days ago

About 200 years after the Van der Heyden brothers turned firefighting into municipal infrastructure, Amsterdam did the same for horses falling into canals.

Paardenreddingstoestel means "horse rescue apparatus." Johan Christoph Sinck's own technical term was verplaatsbare hijsinrichting, "portable lifting apparatus." The machine became known as het toestel van Sinck ("Sinck's device"), with the nickname het zinktoestel ("the sinking device"), a pun on zinken, "to sink."

1852: Gerrit Sinck (1815–1886), originally a leerlooier (tanner), opens Amsterdam's first paardenslagerij (horse slaughterhouse) at Marnixstraat 194. He buys horses no longer fit for work, tans the hides, and sells horse meat.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.371571,4.8760238,3a,75y,235....

That's now the Coffeeshop 1e Hulp ("first aid"), in case you need to pick up some weed after dropping off horse carcases.

In the 1860s his son Johan Christoph Sinck (1837–1923) develops the verplaatsbare hijsinrichting after repeatedly helping recover horses from canals with improvised gieken (derricks/booms). The design is a mobiele driepoot met takel ("mobile tripod with hoist").

The apparatus is first reported in Algemeen Handelsblad on 15 November 1869 after recovering a horse and heavy miller's wagon from a canal.

From the 1870s onward Amsterdam police and the fire brigade summon Sinck via a dedicated telegraph line whenever a horse fell into a canal. The apparatus is used about 50 times a year, roughly once a week.

In 1917 the city purchases the apparatus and municipalizes the service. The fire brigade continues using it into the 1930s.

At the 1883 Amsterdam International Colonial and Export Exhibition Sinck exhibits a model together with recovery statistics: 94 horses, 4 cattle, 2 hearses, 3 omnibuses, 73 carriages, 66 freight wagons, 2 steam boilers, plus barrels of margarine, syrup, tobacco, and Liernur sewage machinery.

In 1908 the city considers buying a second toestel van Sinck but decides one is sufficient because it had never been needed simultaneously at two locations.

On 16 July 1929 the famous photograph is published in the evening edition of Algemeen Handelsblad. A horse belonging to Vogelpoel en Noorwegen bolts into the canal at Westermarkt, swims beneath the bridge at the Herengracht/Leliegracht, and is lifted out with Sinck's device, six years after Johan Christoph Sinck's death.

Official Amsterdam City Archives story:

https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/stukken/dieren/paard-w...

Official Amsterdam City Archives image:

https://archief.amsterdam/beeldbank/detail/875cdbf3-7446-304...

Google Maps (The horse "...zwom tot hij onder de brug van de Leliegracht in de Herengracht vaste grond onder de voeten voelde.": "...swam until it reached firm footing under the Leliegracht bridge at the Herengracht."):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leliegracht+16,+1015+DE+Am...

That's conveniently right by the current Cow Museum CowParadise at Leliegracht 4, in case you want to do some museum touring and cow shopping while visiting this famous horse lifting landmark.

History of the Sinck family, the horse rescue apparatus, contemporary newspaper reports, municipal adoption, and surviving examples:

https://www.hippomobielerfgoed.nl/2020/sinck/

History of Amsterdam canal horse rescues and the famous 1929 photograph:

https://www.hippomobielerfgoed.nl/2018/in-de-amsterdamse-gra...

Today's a nice day for a bike or even horse ride, so I'm inspired to swing by these landmarks, and pick up some medical weed at 1e Hulp and some fresh cows at the CowParadise museum! Anyone want to meet up at the canal for a smoke and a swim?

dheera• 18 days ago

Why didn't they just build railings and fences so that horses don't fall into canals?

exceptione• 18 days ago

Canals were used for transport by boats/ships. My guess would be that railings would be a hindrance for loading/unloading.

jessekv3• 18 days ago

That device's legacy lives on and is still in active use, though the main customers are now cows:

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2021/05/rotterdam-floating-farm-cri...

DonHopkins3• 17 days ago

But the PvdD, which has long opposed the experiment, has started a social media campaign raising its concerns about animal welfare, after a second cow fell into the water and had to be rescued on King’s Day. It is believed that the animal was crossing from the floating platform to a small area of grassland for the cows on the dockside, and could not climb out.

Oh bummer, it's really hard to get a cow crane on Kings day, they are all tied up rescuing drunks from the canals. Surge pricing, owch!

The firefighting system of the Van der Heyden brothers in 17th century Amsterdam

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