W. & B. Douglas descriptive catalogue and price-list of patent pumps, hydraulic rams, yard hydrants, street washers, garden engines, pump chain, and other hydraulic engines, hardware, etc. . . . by [CATALOGUE -- WATER PUMPS]. [DOUGLAS, Benjamin, DOUGLAS, Jr., Benjamin & DOUGLAS, John M.] - 1887.

Middletown, CT, New York & Chicago: W. & B. Douglas, 1887. 8vo. [2], 319, [1] pp. Woodcut-engraved frontisp., Universal Exposition plate printed in gilt, 100s of woodcut-engravings throughout. Dark green publisher’s cloth, gilt lettering on front cover & spine (minor scuffing, edgewear, minor wear & bumping to couple corners), still VG copy, w/ tipped-in TLS from John M. Douglas (Secretary & Treasurer) to John L. Smith & Co. of Norfolk, VA dated Jan. 4, 1894. First edition, thus, of this lavishly illustrated catalogue for Victorian water pumps, horse power pumps, windmill pumps, and hydraulic rams. Hydraulic rams were considered one of the greatest technical innovations of the 19th-Century allowing farms and rural areas to pump water for sanitation, health, irrigation, landscape gardening, and livestock substantially reducing the back-breaking work of lugging water up slopes or hills. The Douglas Company was also an early innovator in developing fire hydrants and portable or small fire fighting engines, such as the garden fire engine, Village Fire Engine, Crane-Neck Village Fire Engine, the Patent Aquarius or portable hand force pump, the Aquapult, and even the double duty “California” Brass Portable Force Pump used for fire-fighting, as well as by fruit orchards and growers in spraying trees and plants to destroy worms, bugs, or insects. Worldcat locates 6 copies (Hagley, Virginia, Wesleyan, Delaware, Harvard, San Jacinto Museum); See: Arthur Downs, The Introduction of the American Water Ram, Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1975), pp. 56-103; Richard Dickerson, W & B Douglas, Tool Makers of Middletown, Connecticut (2019).