Steam driven water pumps take many forms and a classic configuration is the Fire Engine Pumper.  Mr. Jim Murray, retired F.D.N.Y. and a close personal friend of Richard Curt Nepper, the last owner of the Ahrens-Fox Fire Engine Co. has graciously provided us with a copy of his presentation with his photo gallery as presented to the Fire Museum of Maryland in 2011. The photos are from the personal collection of both Mr. Nepper and Mr. Murray.

In the presentation Mr. Murray refers to  three pump types used at Ahrens-Fox. They were the rotary, the piston, and the centrifugal pump. A rotary pump, shown to the right, is a positive displacement pump using either a single rotor  (vane, piston, progressing cavity, screw, or peristaltic) or multiple rotor (gear, lobe circumferential piston, or screw). A reciprocating pump is either a piston, a plunger or a diaphragm. Centrifugal pumps differ from rotary pumps in that they rely on kinetic energy rather than mechanical means to move liquid. Liquid enters the pump at the center of a rotating impeller and gains energy as it moves to the outer diameter of the impeller.

Alexander Bonner "Moses" Latta, Nineteenth-Century Inventor and Entrepreneur, by Sandra R. Seidman, Northern Kentucky University  "Alexander B. Latta is given credit for the first workable steam fire engine   produced in 1853 for the city of Cincinnati." First published in the Journal of Kentucky Studies, Northern Kentucky University, Volume Twenty-nine, September 2012

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