By Tom Roche, Secretary of the Business Sprinkler Alliance.. In February 1877, a fire broke out in a Massachusetts mill. It was, by most accounts, an unremarkable fire and the kind of incident that at any other time would have gutted a building, destroyed livelihoods, and perhaps cost lives. But on this occasion, something different happened. The fire at the American Linen Mill in Fall River was stopped in its tracks before it had the chance to become catastrophic. It was the