This is a General "Quick Aid" Fire Guard, Model SA-303 — a 2½-gallon soda-acid fire extinguisher made by the General Pacific Corp. of Los Angeles (the West Coast branch of the General Detroit Corp.). It's a copper tank with an embossed brass label, a red cast-iron top/handle, and a rubber hose with a brass nozzle. Inside it held a sodium bicarbonate solution plus a small bottle of sulfuric acid; turning it upside down mixed the two, and the CO₂ produced pushed the water out the hose. The label also warns it's not for electrical fires and gives annual recharge instructions.
Age: Collectors and dealers usually date the SA-303 to the 1940s, which fits a General Pacific–labeled unit like this one, though production ran roughly from the 1930s into the '50s. The blue Harbor Testing Laboratory tag (Wilmington, CA) is punched for June 1962, so it was still in service then. Soda-acid units were phased out in the 1960s.
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