Throwback Thursday post: Original posting date February 29th, 2009.

We received these images from some of the brothers over at Brotherhood Instructors Jamie Morelock from Toledo (OH) and Andrew Brassard from Milton, Ontario. We thought it would be neat to share a little bit of fire service history.

The articles quotes:

The most useful tool on the truck is the Halligan Tool- about 30″ long- it is an ugly bar of forged steel- weighs only eight pounds, can be used in tight places and can do anything.

It’s nice to see that in all of the years the Halligan has been around very little has changed. There have been many attempts made to make it better, but none have really stuck. In the near future we’ll do a post comparing the Halligan Bar to some of the impostors; you may be surprised to see some of the differences. It was also interesting that the advertisements calls it the Amazing Halligian Bar, interestingly enough, we had a post here on the site a few years back with the same title.

It’s disappointing to see that Wikipedia even has some of the facts wrong. In particular, look at the pictures. That’s no Halligan! Maybe one of these days we’ll take the time to send them a write-up with the corrections.

Click here for the supplemental page with additional pictures of the Real Halligan, and even a few jet axe ones, since some new folks may not have even heard of that method of forcible entry.