Red Comet Fire Suppression Globe 1919
Red Comet
Zoom This! The Red Comet is the earliest documented use of fire suppression inside homes and businesses. The small business started out in a garage on the outskirts of Littleton Colorado called the Red Comet Manufacturing Company. When it first opened in 1919, it took a few years to get the designs. The company came out with their first product…rightfully named, the red comet. This device could work two ways. First, people could store them in their house in padded containers and if there was a fire in their house or a neighboring house, they could take these devices and throw them into the base of the fire. The main idea for this product was for it to be hung or mounted in hallways of homes or warehouses. The red comet has a spring loaded mechanism that when the clip holding the spring back burns off at 160 degrees, it sends a metal rod upwards into the glass where it shatters and spreads the special fluid on the fire. The contents of the globe is a special fire protection agent called carbon tetrachloride. Carbon tetrachloride is a clear substance (looks like water) but has a “sweet” smell and can be detected at very low levels of concentration. The use of this special agent was banned in 1980 due to environmental and safety hazards. The substance damaged the central nervous system, liver, and kidneys and being exposed to this liquid can lead to death. Many firefighters were diagnosed with these problems after fires where there have been large amounts of the firefighting liquid in the buildings. Carbon tetrachloride was great in controlling fires, but it produced smoke which carried all the harmful particles from the substance into the air, and without proper personal protective equipment, such as a self contained breathing apparatus, it was very easy to be exposed to the chemical. The red comet lead the way in fire suppression mounting agents and were used to help design the water based sprinklers that we see today. Although these extinguishers turned out to be harmful to the health of people in and outside the fire, the ends justified the means.
I am researching a Red Comet fire supression globe that contains “CM7″ or “azeotropic methyl chloride” It appears, as azeotropic implies, that another substance is in the globe with the Methyl chloride. Does anyone know what that substance is?