A globe of water would not have been very effective in an attic fire, but
carbon tetrachloride (now outlawed) was used in this way. Glass globes
filled with carbon-tet were sometimes used as fire extinguishers as
recently as the 'fifties. I recall seeing one used to extinguish a fire in
a platemaking machine at a newspaper office about 1960.
 
 
 
    _____
___(_____)      Historians may be no more than broad-gauge gossips,
|Baby the\      but archaeologists know how to dish the dirt!
|1969 Land\_===__
|  ___Rover   ___|o
|_/ . \______/ . ||
___\_/________\_/________________________________________________
Ned Heite Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html