>Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 05:16:36 -0400
>From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear)
>Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
>Subject: Re: City Fire Alarm Pull Boxes
>Message-ID: <telecom17.117.16@telecom-digest.org>
>Organization: TELECOM Digest
>Sender: editor@telecom-digest.org
>X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 17, Issue 117, Message 16 of 17

lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) writes:

> I was in Philadelphia and noticed the fire alarm pull boxes were gone.
> They used to be mounted on utility poles at corners.  As a child, we
> were trained to know where the nearest pull box was to our home.  If
> we used it, we were to wait there for the fire truck so they'd know
> where to go.  Fire drill posters in buildings included the nearest
> street pull box. . .

 >In the early 1970s I had a tour of the Philadelphia fire dispatching
> center (this was pre-911 days.)  At that time, it seemed most calls
> came via boxes, not the telephone.  A pullbox caused a loud oscillator
> to beep the four digit code of the box.  (I think the beep was
> duplicated in the fire house that served the location, but I'm not
> sure).  The dispatcher identified the location, and telephoned
> (through a private direct line PBX) the fire house to provide details.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The boxes have been gone in Chicago
> for years with the exception of schools, hospitals and residences
> for geriatric patients (old people's homes) where they are required
> by law. The reason is they were subject to too much abuse. People
> who like to play games would pull the alarm on a street corner box
> then run off before the firemen arrived to find nothing going on.
> With 911 working as effeciently as it does, and the prevalence of
> telephones, there is no longer any real need for the boxes anyway.  PAT]

The boxes are part of the "Gamewell System" which dates back to 1852.
Gamewell is still very much in business -- and even has a web site at
URL: < http://www.gamewell.com >.

The familiar red pull boxes were based on classic DC telegraph
technology.  A single DC loop (wire pair) was run many locations in a
neighborhood and each location would have a Gamewell box which
contained a spring-driven internal sprocket wheel with teeth notched
in a unique pattern.  When a citizen would pull the lever on the
outside of the box, the spring would be wound and the wheel would then
turn, activating a switch which would close the circuit on the loop,
sounding a gong in the local fire house.  Because each box had a
unique number, the firemen could then identify which box had been
pulled and proceed to that location.

In small towns, the system might activate an air-horn or steam whistle
which would muster the volunteer fire company.  The pattern of whistle
blasts, for example 3-4-1, would identify the location so that
volunteers could rush directly to the site and meet up with the crew
bring the equipment from the firehouse.

Many of the boxes also contained an old-fashion morse code key inside 
the box, which could be unlocked by the arriving firemen and used to 
send messages back to the firehouse.  Certainly quaint by today's 
standards!

The beauty of the system was its simplicity.  The electro-mechanical 
assemblies were very reliable.  The fire departments liked the system 
because it provided a positive identification of location and there 
were no problems with trying understand a panicy or non-English speaking 
citizen on a poor quality early telephone system.

I worked with the City of Boston in 1969-72, and I recall a number of 
discussions about the pros and cons of the Gamewell system.  At that 
time, there was considerable urban unrest from both anti-war protests 
and inner-city disturbances.  (Fortunately, Boston remained quite civil 
although local government was concerned the unpleasantness of other 
cities might spread.)  It was decided that a few false alarms were 
preferable to the risks involved in replacing the system with one 
which required citizens to use a telephonic system. 

Anyway, the city had long since stopped maintaining its own wires in 
most locations and was getting dry copper from New England telephone 
for the purposes of the Gamewell system.  One of the Fire Department 
technicians had been experimenting with what other data or voice they 
might be able to run over the same copper loops, but datacom in those 
days was pretty primitive.

One of the things which we looked at was using the system for security 
alarms on public buildings.  The idea was to provide a second set of 
numeric codes to indicate breaking-and-entering at the public schools
and then filtering those signals to the police or school department 
security people.  Unfortuantely, the issue of life-safety was considered 
so important the the state legislature decades earlier had manadated 
that the fire alarm systems in schools be separate from any other 
telephone or telegraph device -- thus the limitation was legislative 
rather than technical.

By the way, if you like those Western Union clocks which were discussed 
in TELECOM Digest a while back, you'd probably love to look at the 
insides of the old Gamewell apparatus.  The fire alarm call boxes are 
elegant assemblies of brass gears and contactors, beautifully machined to 
the highest standards of their day to assure maximum reliability.

And on the firehouse end, there was equally intersting equipment, 
including paper tape printers which, looking like time-recording 
seismographs, used spring driven clockworks and ink pens mounted on 
the ends of magnetic arms to keep a permanent record of the exact 
time and date of each alarm.

Or, as Ogden Nash wrote:

             The one-L lama is a priest.
               The two-L llama is a beast. 
             But I will bet a silk pajama,
               there isn't any three-L lllama. (*)

     (*) Some readers informed Mr. Nash that this was a type
     of large conflagration -- to which Mr. Nash said, "pooh."

Cheers,

The Old Bear