Excerpt from Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Fire Commissioners: For the Year Ending April 30, 1882 During the year the sliding-pole has been introduced into fourteen houses of the department, and saves much time, as by it the men can drop from their sleeping or recreation rooms in front of the apparatus. With the changing of the stalls, the introduction of the swinging harness, the sliding - pole, and the new quick-ringing electric gongs in the permanent houses, the time taken to hitch and get ready to leave quar ters is as quick now as is consistent with safety. It is a rule of the department that when any signal for a fire on either the gong or tapper is received at the quarters of any com pany, every member will immediately report for duty on the floor as soon as possible after the first stroke. The horses will be hitched up, and the company prepared to leave quar ters upon the word go, to be given by the Officer in com mand. During the past year this board, in its inspection of the several houses of the' department, tested the length of time which it took to comply with the foregoing order while all the men in the several houses, except the house patrol, were in bed, and the result in the permanent houses of the department showed an average time of 11 seconds for each house. The following property is in charge of the Board of Commissioners of the Fire Department. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.