Early American fire alarm systems (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Early American fire alarm systems (2022)

ffam.org

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https://web.archive.org/web/20240225134243/https://www.ffam....

I remember seeing a bunch of these red fire alarm boxes around the Boston area in the 80s and blue police boxes as well. They must all have been obsolete and it took me a while to learn what they were (I never asked an old person so nobody I asked really knew beyond what you could divine from inspection. Only now do I know why they are locked. Which was a bit of a mystery!

Still being used, in Cambridge at least:

https://www.cambridgema.gov/cfd/News/2024/02/firealarmboxes....

Also in San Francisco.

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/San-Francisco-historic-...

I was once recruited by a consulting firm that developed the control center for the SFFD, and visited the command center. They had computers listening to the pull box circuits and displaying box locations, but they kept the wind-up Morse inker to put dashes on a paper tape, and its bell, in case that failed. That was pre-cell phone, though.

The upside is not relying on telecommunications, but the downside is one trip and they don’t trip again until they are manually reset by a tech.

Presumably at least one fire truck shows up so they can reset it.

In some cities including Boston itself, it’s not the Fd that resets it but the fire alarm company of record(I work for one) who also gets a call. The possible issue is if another alarm comes in before the tech arrives it will not report to the FD again.

I’m a fire alarm technician in the Boston area. There are still plenty fire alarm master boxes in use

My father worked as a locksmith in his teens (early 70's) in a small town. This reminded me a little bit of the alarm systems he said he worked on in some neighborhoods where several houses would be basically connected in series, so that one alarm being tripped would really show only that one of several houses in an area may have an intrusion.

I wonder whether those drops might have used dry loops from the phone company, which used to offer circuits with no power or dial tone ostensibly just for alarm systems (but which could otherwise be used creatively). Maybe they were effectively on the dry loop equivalent of a party line.

It wasn't that uncommon for residential burglar alarms to use polarity reversal on dry leased lines, but it was quite expensive. In a series circuit like this, I'd more likely guess that it was dedicated wiring owned by the alarm company. This was fairly common practice in some markets and one of the reasons that the burglar alarm companies were so often also in the telegraph business (e.g. ADT).

Of course AT&T could have done the same thing, and indeed they tried, but their burglar alarm ventures were never that successful. Except when they owned ADT for a while, but the fact that they bought ADT and continued to pursue their own alarm division underscores that they had a hard time with the alarm market.

I imagine there are any number of good firefighting museums around the world. Wandering the Fort Wayne museum[0] was sobering, learning of the technological and bureaucratic obstacles that led to unnecessary mass casualties in the past.

[0] https://www.fortwaynefiremuseum.com

The fire fighting museum in Fulda is really quite good with exhibits about systems around the world.

http://www.dfm-fulda.de/

> learning of the technological and bureaucratic obstacles that led to unnecessary mass casualties in the past

Still going on. American firefighters widely use outdated helmets that haven't changed much in two hundred years. https://www.ctif.org/news/texas-joins-other-progressive-us-f...

Europe uses much more modern, safer, lighter ones.

Yes, but it's totally possible to buy European jet-style helmets. You can order them from any fire supply. I know only one guy who uses one, he's British, and gets made fun of constantly for it.

You never see them because the 1780 leathers look, and I quote, "cool as fuck, bro". You'll get guys spending $1000 of their own money to get a leather NYC style helmet that is less safe than the one supplied by their company.

Fashion firefighting is such a big deal. You'll still get people who refuse to wash all the cancerous carcinogens off their gear because it "looks cool" to have them smokey.

The Gamewell boxes are very much in use in the Boston area. My town has dozens, they're tested regularly and work if phone/cell networks are down. Love 100 year old tech!

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3taQTugqD2/

The city of Boston’s official Instagram account used the recent AT&T outage as an opportunity to remind people that these exist and they work!

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3qeX-yuVmp/?igsh=dDk3NHpsbmF5Yz...

On the 3rd floor of the ADT security building in Boca Raton FL, there is an impressive collection of early telegraph based fire and burglar alarm hardware. Not open to the public but hopefully someday more accessible.

"Joker Room" is slowly dying out.

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