Good Egress
99% Invisible
00:00
The History of Fire Escapes
There are these hilarious old advertisements for fake cabinets and holler refrigerators so that you can store your ropes and basket apparatus. One engineer actually thought that instead of dispatching ropes from inside, archers could shoot the ropes up to the higher floors. Another patent proposed individual parachute hats with accompanying rubber shoes to break the fall. There were lots of ideas, but by the 1870s, fire escapes begin becoming something iron, something fixed to the building.
Play episode from 06:06
Transcript
