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| - Photos purporting to show a device that sprays a firefighter with a shower of water for protection have been shared online for decades. In fact, the device has been discussed in print — usually as a curiosity — for well over a century.
Though versions have been shared across most social media platforms, a photo of the device was shared by the X account History Photographed on Feb. 20, 2025:
The photo authentically shows an actual demonstration of German firefighting technology. According to German firefighting magazine Feuer Wehr, the inventor of the technology — a German fire chief from Altona named Carl Burchard Köning — was demonstrating his own technology in the above widely circulated photo.
Most social media posts attribute the photo to the 1930s. Snopes finds this date to be improbably late, however. A photo of a demonstration of this same technology is featured in several historical archives and dated to 1899:
According to Feuer Wehr, the device "caused a great stir between 1900 and 1910." Indeed, not much later, the Berlin fire brigade began to investigate the invention. A January 1904 report in a newspaper named The Insurance Age made note of the Berlin fire brigade's experimentation with a "water hat":
The Berlin fire brigade is experimenting with a device called a water hat. It consists of the addition to the ordinary helmet of a circular rose which sprays water at an angle of 45 degrees in a downward direction. The pipe which leads to this rose is to be attached to the nozzle of an ordinary fire hose.
When in use, the fireman is protected, as for as his head and face are concerned. by a curtain of water, which, besides its coolness, gives him pure air to breathe. Even in the midst of a dense smoke, as it acts as a condensing medium and also as a filter.
On May 1, 1907, the Berlin fire brigade gave a public demonstration of its water hat system by having a firefighter run through a pile of burning pallets with water spraying, shown below:
The 1931 dating is likely the result of a 2008 post on the website BoingBoing that attributed an at least partially illustrated image resembling the viral photo to a February 1931 issue of "Modern Mechanix," a science and engineering magazine popular at the time. The device was described by that magazine this way:
It's a far cry from the old bucket brigade to modern fire-fighting efficiency. Even now the American fireman is known as a "smoke-eater," but that term would hardly fit the present day fire laddie in Germany, for with the new portable sprinkler system adopted by some of the larger cities of that country a fireman may approach quite close to the flames without becoming singed.
The outfit, which looks like a deep sea diver's uniform, is equipped with a sprinkler helmet which operates off a connection attached to the nozzle of the hose. The fireman can control the spray by a simple movement of a hand lever.
The 1931 Modern Mechanix article made it seem as though this technology was new at this time when, in fact, the technology was more than a quarter-century old. Regardless of this fact, the topic of sprinkler helmets appears to have entered the American consciousness in the 1930s.
During a town hall meeting with Camden, New Jersey's fire chief in October 1930, for example, residents asked if it might make sense for their jurisdiction to invest in the technology. The chief, Thomas Nicholas, who was promoting his department's purchase of a different firefighting invention, scoffed at the idea, as reported by the Camden Courier:
Chief Nicholas explained the new device in commenting on a "deep sea diver" firemen's outfit just introduced in Germany. That outfit has a helmet like a diver's, swathes a fireman in rubber from head to foot and enables him to work in the protection of a shower bath by turning on a sprinkler in the top of his helmet. The sprinkler operates from a connection attached to the nozzle of the hose, and will keep off smoke and flames while the fireman works.
Chief Nicholas declared the German invention impracticable. "It is much too heavy to carry," he said, "it does not allow a fireman to bend over and in Winter the constant stream of water directly over him would freeze him into a chunk of ice. The outfit is far too clumsy. I think our giant spray nozzle is far better."
While the invention was popular to demonstrate and write about, it is unclear how effective it was, how widespread its use was, or exactly when it fell out of favor. Because, however, several German fire departments experimented with this technology in the early 1900s, the claim is true.
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