The Powerful History of NFPA in Fire Safety

May 23, 2025
9 Min Read

Key takeaways

Early sprinkler system manufacturers had their own pipe sizing & spacing rules.
Six fire safety pioneers worked towards standardizing the installation of sprinklers.
Founded in 1896 by insurers, NFPA now publishes 300+ codes.
NFPA 101 was published after the 1911 Triangle Fire, shifting focus to life safety.
Today, NFPA impacts more than 50 countries, backed by 10K+ expert volunteers.

The history of NFPA is rooted in the heartbreak, disaster, and chaos that started the movement to standardize fire safety. In 1872, when the Great Boston Fire started and turned 776 buildings into ashes, it not only became a tragedy but a wake-up call. It resulted in a $73.5 million loss, which is equivalent to 1.68 billion in today’s dollars. The firefighters fought bravely, but they were outnumbered and exhausted. The hose couplings didn’t fit, and the water pressure was inconsistent. Nine years later, a fire broke out in a crowded opera house in Vienna and resulted in the tragic death of 400 people. All these incidents were symptoms of the global problem, i.e, lack of a unified standard for fire protection and safety.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) wasn’t born in a boardroom. It was born from the ashes of multiple disasters that should never have happened. It just began with a problem that was as simple as the incompatibility of sprinkler pipes, and then grew into a worldwide mission to save lives and properties.

Today, NFPA has over 300 fire safety, electrical safety, building safety, and life safety codes that are used by over 50 countries worldwide. And it all started with a group of frustrated insurers and safety advocates meeting in Boston to fix the differences in the manufacture and installation of sprinkler systems.

In this blog, we are going to dive into the full story of how it all started, the key figures that were involved in the formation of NFPA, and how it became a leading authority in fire prevention and safety for over a century.

The Fire Safety Practices Before NFPA

In the early 1800s, people rarely discussed fire prevention. There were narrow alleys that accelerated the speed of the fire, and most cities and towns were dependent on a volunteer fire brigade that was formed by local men. The buckets were filled with water from wells or rivers, hand-pumped engines, and leather hoses. There was no clear communication, the hydrant placement was haphazard, and the water supply was unreliable.

In the second half of the 1800s, there was a rapid rise of industrialization, and it changed how the cities looked, worked, and lived. There were factories, workshops, and industrial buildings that were large, multi-storied, and filled with flammable materials like textiles, paper, wood, and chemicals. The streets became narrower, fire hazards increased, and the evolution of fire safety was still not fast enough to keep pace. Workers had to live in tightly packed tenements near their workplaces, and they were built from cheap materials and were poorly ventilated. If there was a single spark from a lamp, it could ignite the entire city block, which happened in the Great Boston Fire. Mass casualties, such as smoke inhalation, and millions of dollars in personal property loss were frequent during fires.

The major fires that literally shook the nation were the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, which destroyed over 17,000 buildings, the Boston Fire in 1872, which consumed 65 acres of the city, and the Brooklyn Theater Fire in 1876, which called for the need of fire-resistant materials, exit planning, and alarm systems.

It was at this time that insurance companies took an interest in fire prevention to protect their finances. Insurers, engineers, and other city officials then started to seriously discuss the need for a uniform system that led to the formation of NFPA just two decades later.

The Sprinkler Problem That Turned Into a Fire Safety Revolution

Henry S. Parmalee’s Automatic Sprinkler System

The idea of automatic fire sprinkler systems was first proposed by an English Engineer, John Carey, in 1806. And after 68 years, in 1874, Henry S. Parmalee, a piano manufacturer from New Haven, Connecticut, invented the first automatic sprinkler head. His design was really clever; it was a network of water pipes that were fitted with a sprinkler head that was sealed by a solder that would melt under intense heat. When the fire breaks, the solder will melt and the water will flow directly over the flames. However, Parmelee’s system was somewhat expensive and unreliable.

Frederick Grinnell’s Improved Version

In 1881, Frederick Grinnell patented his own version of an automatic sprinkler system that was a much more sensitive, reliable, and cost-effective model. Grinnell’s sprinkler head used a glass bulb that was filled with a liquid that would expand and burst at specific temperatures and would release water. This system was saving lives, and insurers started giving discounts to the properties that installed them.

However, many manufacturers started to enter the market and created their own designs that were incompatible with one another. There was no governing code, and every sprinkler manufacturer and installer had their own sizing and spacing rules. In Boston only, there were nine different standards for pipe size and head spacing within a 100-mile radius. If a part of the sprinkler system was broken or needed replacement, there was no way to get it from another manufacturer. This was literally dangerous as there were multiple system failures and staggering losses in lives and properties.

The Formation Of the National Fire Protection Association

In 1895, a committee on Automatic Sprinkler Protection was called in Boston at the Underwriters Bureau of New England to do something about this sprinkler problem, and it was hosted by the secretary of the Underwriters Bureau, Everett Crosby. There were six fire safety pioneers: John Freeman of Factory Mutual, Uberto C. Crosby of the New England Fire Insurance Exchange, W. H. Stratton of the Factory Insurance Association, Frederick Grinnell of Providence Steam & Gas Pipe Co. (later Grinnell Fire Protection), and F. Eliot Cabot of the Boston Board of Fire Underwriters. These men were either insurers, engineers, or equipment makers. They together published the Report of the Committee on Automatic Sprinkler Protection in March 1896, which later became NFPA 13 (Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems)

Then, later in the year 1896, the committee formally founded the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and official articles were adopted that published its new name and purpose. NFPA began with a small group of insurers, and there were 20 chartered members, all of whom were fire insurance organizations. They included New York and Boston Boards of Fire Underwriters, the Philadelphia and St. Louis Underwriters, the Cleveland and Chicago Boards of Underwriters, and even the Canadian Fire Underwriters’ Association. These insurers had to pay claims for countless fire losses, and now they grouped together to prevent them.

Publishing Their Second Code: National Electrical Code (NEC)

Just after the year NFPA was formed, the members turned to solve electrical and related hazards. They published the first copy of the National Electrical Code (NEC), which was only 39 pages long. The main goal was to reduce the electrical fires that were plaguing the railroads, factories, and cities by addressing the risks associated with electrical installations, but it was updated afterwards, which is now widely known as NFPA 70.

The rules of NFPA’s membership also started to loosen, and it wasn’t an insurer’s association anymore. In 1903, men from London, Sydney, and St. Petersburg joined the group, and by 1905, fire department officers and state fire marshals began to join the group.

The Birth Of the Life Safety Code After The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

After NFPA 13, fire codes for alarms, standpipes, exits, and extinguishers were published by NFPA. Crucially, in 1913, NFPA formed a Committee on Safety to Life and published its first edition (Building Exits Code) of what is NFPA 101 today. After the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York that killed 146 workers, the fire safety experts realized that protecting the building occupants was as important as protecting the property, which “planted the seed of the life safety code.”

NFPA 101 outlined the requirements for exits, corridors, fire drills, and smoke control for factories, schools, theatres, etc. It was their way of saying that even if the building burns, the people must be able to get out.

Publishing Other NFPA Codes and Standards

There were other tragic fires that influenced the work of NFPA throughout the 20th century. After Boston’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in 1942 and Winecoff Hotel Blaze in Atlanta in 1946, NFPA realized that they needed to update their exit requirements. Following these mid-40s fire tragedies, the Building Exits Code (now NFPA 101) began to be used as a legal requirement. NFPA codes weren’t just guidelines anymore as jurisdictions began to enact them into the law.

Chicago’s Our Lady of Angels School Fire in 1958 led to the death of 92 children and nuns, which forced NFPA to include strict interior finishing and exiting requirements for schools and churches in the Life Safety Code. This way, NFPA responded to every other shock over time. For example, the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire and Chicago’s 2003 Station Nightclub fire led NFPA to publish new standards on assembly occupancies and flame effects. Recently, in 2018, they published NFPA 3000 (The Standard for an Active Shooter/Hostile Event Program) after the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shootings.

This actually shows how strictly NFPA sticks to its mission, “eliminating death, injury, and economic loss due to fire, electrical, and other related hazards”, even after 125 years.

The Present NFPA

Today, NFPA is a far cry from what it was in 1895. It is a worldwide organization with tens of thousands of fire, electrical, and life safety professionals, volunteers, and staff. Even today, NFPA standards are revised and written by more than 10,000 expert volunteers to make sure that each and every code is up to date with the latest science, new materials, and lessons from real-world experience. These codes are now available online in NFPA’s LiNK platform, which provides digital access to 1,400+ codes and standards with a few clicks. This way, contractors and fire inspectors can use tablets on the job to read NFPA 70 or NFPA 13 during fire inspection.

Additionally, NFPA also provides instructor-led classes, web seminars, and online courses, which help students to earn certification in fire protection and electrical safety. Along with that, it has also broadened its horizon way beyond North America and holds international conferences to share knowledge and research. Special initiatives like “Outthink Wildfire” in order to reduce wildfire losses also involve global partners.

This self-funded nonprofit organization is still refining its traditional codes, and after each new calamity, like lithium-ion battery fire or a surge in electric vehicles, NFPA members always get back to the drafting table.

Conclusion

Key figures like Everett Crosby, F. Eliot Cabot, and Frederick Grinnell are responsible for every NFPA regulation that governs the design and installation of fire protection and electrical systems. NFPA is evolving every day and adapting to new challenges by developing standards for cyber attacks on building controls, for indoor agriculture, for autonomous vehicles in garages, and the list goes on. However, in the end, their mission to save lives and property from fire and other related hazards remains the same.

When you understand the history of NFPA, you understand that every fire protection decision is rooted in over a century of hard-earned knowledge and collective action. It is not just about rules and red tape. It’s about the tears of those who made it through those fire disasters and the foresight of a group of insurers that is saving lives each and every day with a standard that was written so long ago.