Rare weapon ca 1700?

Tempted to bid, have never owned a flamethrower and have never even seen an antique one, but I’d be interested in how it was determined that this wasn’t really a fire extinguisher or grease gun.

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/handfeuerspritze-wohl-deutsch-nuernberg-ende-16-0D94056BED

 

I think its more of an extinguisher than a flame thrower.

 

Agree. Think about trying to use this in combat, might have a range of 20-30 feet optimistically. The operator would be an obvious target for enemy troops armed with guns, bows, crossbows, all of which far outrange the “flame thrower.” If it had musket ball holes in it, it’d have more credibility.

 

That looks beautiful!

 

hand fire sprayer..translated which I think they mean hand pump to put fires out

 

Dunno, Maine Deutsch isn’t sehr schlecht, but looking up “fire extinguisher” I get

Feuerlöscher

 

They may well be correct that it is a flame thrower..it just seems more like what they refer to in this article as a squirt of around that date..Good luck on the bidding!

In about 200 BC, Ctesibius of Alexandria invented a hand pump able to deliver water to a fire and it is known that the Romans used bucket chains, buckets passed hand-to-hand to deliver water to the fire. Then, in the middle Ages, ‘squirts’ began to be used to apply jets of water to fires. The squirt worked rather like a bicycle pump. The nozzle was dipped into water and about one litre was sucked up by pulling out the plunger. The charged squirt was then directed at the fire and the plunger pushed home to eject the water. Squirts were used on the 1666 Great Fire of London.

 

It's not a flamethrower (Flammenwerfer) but a manual fire extinguisher.

A similar one can be seen here:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuerspritze