Moses Latta was not the first man to harness steam as a replacement for muscles in fire-fighting. The earliest steam fire engine had been fashioned in 1829 in London by George Braithwaite, a noted engineer. His assistant on the project was John Ericsson, who more than three decades later was to win recognition in this country as the designer of the ironclad “Monitor” of Civil War fame. Appropriately dubbed the “Novelty,” Braithwaite’s steam fire engine never captured the public’s fancy, although a few were sold on the Continent, one purchaser being the King of Prussia. In 1833 Braithwaite gave up his project. The idea would not die quite so easily, however. In 1840 another English engineer, Paul Hodge, built a steam fire engine for several New York insurance companies which were finding the fire-fighting inefficiency of that day extremely costly. Hodge’s engine never had a fair chance. For a long time not a single volunteer company in New York would undertake to man the cumbersome machine, fearing it would replace the volunteers’ beloved hand-pump engines and spoil what had become their favorite pastime—fighting fires in the rough and tumble old-fashioned way. After a little pressure, however, one fire company agreed to operate the machine, and a trial period of several months followed. Almost immediately, the firemen began grumbling about the engine’s awkwardness. They also claimed it didn’t produce enough steam. The constant derision that had greeted their innovation finally discouraged the sponsoring insurance companies. Concluding that the loss in the volunteers’ morale more than outweighed any advantages offered by steam, they dropped their short-lived crusade, and sold Hodge’s engine to a manufacturing firm. There it served the remainder of its days in the unglamorous role of a stationary engine. The same John Ericsson who in 1829 worked with George Braithwaite on the world’s first steam fire engine, designed one of his own in 1841. But even though the engine looked good on paper, it was never actually built. The old aversion to progress by firemen of the day was responsible. Not only New York but other cities as well were guilty of similar heel-dragging. In 1851, a Philadelphian named William Lay came up with another engine design. But again, antipathy, on the part of firemen prevented the engine from ever emerging beyond the drawing board. Fearful—and rightly so—that the advent of steam would spoil their “sport” and excitement, the firemen would not budge. Such was the setting when, in 1852, Moses Latta of Cincinnati developed his first steam fire engine. This earliest Latta engine was only an experimental model, but it was good enough to prompt the Cincinnati city fathers in 1853 to loosen their municipal purse strings to the extent of $5,000 for construction of the world’s first successful steam fire engine, the “Uncle Joe Ross.”