TL;DR: The first fire extinguisher patent was granted in 1723 to a chemist who used gunpowder to scatter fire-suppressing liquid -- a design that stayed in use for over a century. Almon Granger's 1880 chemical patent introduced a safer acid-activated mechanism that laid the foundation for the modern extinguisher. Original patent prints are available framed or unframed.
In 1723, the first patent for a fire extinguisher went to Ambrose Godfrey, a chemist, for a device that sounds more like a weapon than a safety tool: a cask of fire-suppressing liquid connected to a chamber of gunpowder and a fuse. When the heat of a fire ignited the fuse, the gunpowder exploded, scattering the extinguishing liquid across the flames. It worked. And those antique extinguishers stayed in use for more than a century.
That firefighting relied on controlled explosions for 130 years before anyone patented a safer alternative is the kind of fact that reframes everything you thought you knew about fire safety history. The modern extinguisher, which people grab without a second thought in an office kitchen, is the product of a surprisingly long chain of incremental inventions, each trying to solve a problem the previous design created.
The Gunpowder Era: Ambrose Godfrey and the First Patent (1723)
Godfrey was a German-born chemist who had emigrated to England and built a reputation as one of the country's more inventive practitioners of applied chemistry. His extinguisher design was clever in a pyrotechnic way: the fire itself provided the trigger. A fuse running near the flames would ignite when the fire grew close enough, detonating the powder charge and flinging the suppressant outward.
The suppressant in Godfrey's design was a salt-based liquid -- what we would now recognize as a precursor to the potassium-based compounds used in later chemical extinguishers. The explosion would scatter this liquid in a wide pattern, smothering a fire by depriving it of oxygen and cooling the burning material.
These devices were widely distributed. They appeared in homes, warehouses, theaters, and public buildings across 18th-century Britain and eventually spread to the American colonies. They were genuinely useful -- better than nothing, and better than the bucket brigades that were the other main option. Their significant liability was that in a panic, a person trying to deploy one was effectively lighting an explosive device in a room that was already on fire.
The Manby Extinguisher: Compressed Air and Potassium (1818)
The next major advance came almost a century after Godfrey's patent. In 1818, British Army Captain George William Manby introduced a fire extinguisher that operated on an entirely different principle: compressed air stored inside a copper vessel, used to force a fire-suppressing liquid out through a nozzle.
Manby's device held three gallons of potassium carbonate solution -- a compound that works by interrupting the chemical chain reaction that sustains combustion. When the valve was opened, the compressed air expelled the potassium carbonate as a pressurized stream that the user could aim directly at a fire. No fuses, no gunpowder, no controlled explosion. Just a valve and a trigger.
Manby's design was a significant safety improvement. It gave the operator control. You could aim the stream, adjust the discharge, and stop if needed. The device was portable -- about the size and weight of a large bucket -- and required no special knowledge to operate. Manby demonstrated it publicly by extinguishing fires in Edinburgh and London, generating attention and eventually government interest.
The limitations were practical. Maintaining the correct air pressure was technically difficult with the materials available in 1818. The copper vessel was expensive to produce. And potassium carbonate, while effective on some fires, was not effective on all of them. The design was an improvement, but it was far from the last word on the problem.
Granger's Chemical Patent: The Acid Breakthrough (1880)
The most important American advance in fire extinguisher history came from Almon Granger of New Orleans, Louisiana, who was granted a patent in 1880 for a chemical extinguisher that used a very different mechanism to generate its expulsion force.
Granger's design placed a sealed glass bottle of sulfuric acid inside the main vessel, which was filled with sodium bicarbonate solution. When the device was activated, the glass bottle broke, releasing the acid into the bicarbonate. The chemical reaction between the two substances produced carbon dioxide gas rapidly and in large volume, creating the pressure needed to expel the liquid through the nozzle -- no compressed air tank required.
What made the design particularly inventive was Granger's solution to the broken glass problem. When the acid bottle shattered, it produced glass fragments inside the pressurized vessel. Granger incorporated a containment system that kept the broken glass inside the extinguisher rather than allowing it to be expelled along with the suppressant liquid. Without that feature, operating one of these devices in a room with people present would have meant spraying glass shards along with the fire suppressant.
Granger's patent expired seventeen years after it was filed -- just before the next generation of chemical extinguishers arrived. But his acid-in-bottle mechanism became the basis for the soda-acid extinguisher that dominated the market for the next several decades.
Foam, Dry Chemical, and the Modern Era (1900s-1950s)
The early 20th century brought two further innovations that addressed limitations the acid-bicarbonate design could not solve. The first was foam.
Alexander Laurent of Russia developed the chemical foam extinguisher around the turn of the 20th century, adding a foam-generating agent to the suppressant that caused it to expand and form a smothering layer over burning liquids. This was the first extinguisher design that could effectively fight liquid fires -- oil, fuel, chemical spills -- where a water-based or dry suppressant would scatter the burning material rather than contain it.
The foam extinguisher spread widely through industrial and marine applications, where liquid fires were a constant hazard. Shipyards, refineries, and chemical plants equipped with foam extinguishers had a tool that genuinely matched the fires they were most likely to face.
In 1928, DuGas introduced the dry chemical extinguisher: a device that used a pressurized dry powder -- sodium bicarbonate, initially, later other compounds -- rather than a liquid suppressant. The dry chemical was effective on liquid fires and on pressurized gas fires, extending the range of the extinguisher further than any previous design. It was also, crucially, able to be manufactured at a much lower cost than either the compressed-vessel designs or the foam units.
It was not until the 1950s, however, that small dry chemical units were manufactured and marketed specifically for home use. For the first 230 years of the fire extinguisher's existence, it was primarily a commercial and industrial tool. The idea that every home kitchen should have one was a 20th-century development, driven by both improved manufacturing economics and public safety campaigns by fire departments and insurers.
The Fire Extinguisher Patent That Defined the Modern Design
The chain from Godfrey's 1723 gunpowder cask to the red cylinder mounted next to a kitchen door is a long one, but each step in it was a response to a specific problem with the design that came before. Godfrey's design was passive but dangerous. Manby's design added control but required expensive compressed vessels. Granger's design eliminated the compressed vessel requirement but created a glass problem. Laurent's foam design solved liquid fires. DuGas's dry chemical solved pressurized gas fires.
Each patent in the sequence solved something the last one could not. The fire extinguisher installed in every commercial building today is the accumulated answer to 300 years of that question.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the fire extinguisher invented?
The first fire extinguisher patent was granted in 1723 to Ambrose Godfrey, a chemist, for a gunpowder-activated design. The modern pressurized extinguisher was developed by British Captain George William Manby in 1818. The chemical acid-activated design that became standard in the late 19th century was patented by Almon Granger in 1880. The dry chemical extinguisher, which closely resembles the modern units in most buildings, appeared in 1928.
How did the first fire extinguisher work?
Ambrose Godfrey's 1723 extinguisher used a gunpowder charge to scatter fire-suppressing liquid. A fuse running near the flames would ignite from the heat of a fire, detonating the powder and flinging the suppressant outward. These devices worked, but the obvious danger of deploying an explosive in a burning building drove inventors toward safer activation mechanisms over the following century.
What was Almon Granger's contribution to fire extinguisher history?
Almon Granger of New Orleans was granted a U.S. patent in 1880 for a chemical fire extinguisher that used sulfuric acid and sodium bicarbonate -- the reaction between the two generated carbon dioxide gas to expel the suppressant, eliminating the need for a separately stored compressed air chamber. His design also included a mechanism to retain broken glass fragments from the acid bottle inside the device rather than expelling them with the suppressant.
When did home fire extinguishers become common?
Although fire extinguishers were developed and improved throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, small dry chemical units designed specifically for residential use were not widely marketed until the 1950s. The DuGas dry chemical extinguisher debuted in 1928, but it took another two decades for home-scale versions to become commercially available and affordable for ordinary households.
What types of fires can different extinguishers fight?
Different extinguisher designs target different fire classes. Water and soda-acid extinguishers work on ordinary combustible fires (wood, paper, fabric) but are ineffective and potentially dangerous on liquid or electrical fires. Foam extinguishers, developed around 1900, added coverage for burning liquids. Dry chemical extinguishers, introduced in 1928, extended coverage to pressurized gas fires and became the most versatile design for general use.
Written by Rider Tuff, founder of Timeless Patents. Timeless Patents makes museum-quality patent art prints from original U.S. Patent Office documents, celebrating the inventors behind firefighting, safety, and everyday tools. Every print is available framed or unframed, starting at $49.99. Shop the full collection →
