[HN Gopher] Early American Fire Alarm Systems (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
Early American Fire Alarm Systems (2022)
Author : goles
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-03-06 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ffam.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ffam.org)
| atishneo wrote:
| does not load the page.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240225134243/https://www.ffam....
| macintux wrote:
| 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
| gumby wrote:
| The fire fighting museum in Fulda is really quite good with
| exhibits about systems around the world.
|
| http://www.dfm-fulda.de/
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > 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 American firefighters widely use outdated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.
| gumby wrote:
| 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!
| slug wrote:
| Still being used, in Cambridge at least:
|
| https://www.cambridgema.gov/cfd/News/2024/02/firealarmboxes....
| flomo wrote:
| Also in San Francisco.
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/San-Francisco-
| historic-...
| Animats wrote:
| 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.
| temp0826 wrote:
| 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.
| jmbwell wrote:
| 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.
| jwsteigerwalt wrote:
| 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.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| "Joker Room" is slowly dying out.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-06 23:01 UTC)