most buildings were wooden structures.
So, when wood is being exposed to freezing water,
then it becomes very dry and so,
it becomes very easy lightable in the sense that it might catch fire.
So, when this happens,
then the fire might spread also very fast when the whole city is of wooden structures.
So on a Saturday morning,
the fire started and quite soon already,
it was clear that they needed help.
So from all sides of the East Coast, Philadelphia,
Washington, even from New York,
fire departments came to Baltimore to help them.
But when they got there,
they could not help because their fire hose couplings could not be
fitted together so that meant that the equipment could not be used to stop the fire.
At that moment, it also appeared that
about 600 different fire hose couplings were in use all over the United States.
That rapidly changed after the Baltimore fire and
because the fact that there was
no standardized equipment made that fire really spread fast.
So, you can see on a map,
a bit in the left corner,
there is where the fire started and already within a few hours,
a large part of the city was burning and then it's
slowly but inevitably spread in two days
into burning about 1,500 buildings and about 47 acres of city were burned down.
When you look afterwards,
the freezing weather took care of the fact that it was icy all over the place.
So, it was not only very difficult to put out the fire,
it was also even very difficult to move around because of the freezing winter.
This was the story of Baltimore and the lack of standardization of the couplings made
that the advent that
standards were needed even in emergency situations became very clear.
Next lecture will be on paper sizes and weights.
For now, thank you for watching this lecture.