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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

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!

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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

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