Before there was hose there was the bucket, and the bucket decided how close a person had to stand to a fire. Everything that follows is an argument about distance.
The first practical hose is Dutch. In Amsterdam in 1673, Jan van der Heiden sewed lengths of leather into a tube and fitted it to a hand-pumped engine, which for the first time let water be delivered to a fire rather than thrown at it. Leather held pressure but it was heavy, it rotted if stored wet, and the seams were the weakness. Around 1807 the sewn seam was replaced with copper rivets — stronger, and heavier still. A fifty-foot length ran to something like eighty-five pounds dry.
Rubber-lined linen arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century and cut that weight roughly in half. The linen jacket carried the load; the rubber lining held the water. It was a better hose in every respect except one: the jacket mildewed, so every length had to be dried on a tower after every fire. Fire stations were built tall for that reason before they were built tall for anything else.
Hose in service is tested every year at pressure. A length that fails the test comes off the engine permanently, and most of it is cut up or thrown out. That is the line we buy, along with new stock straight from the mill, and it is why the material is worth building with: it was engineered to survive conditions no piece of wall decor will ever see.
