Fire alarm boxes were created here before Bell invented the telephone. So why are we still using them?
By Emily Sweeney
Globe Staff / January 6, 2008
They stand like sentinels on city sidewalks.
Mounted on each black pedestal is a red box shaped like a miniature house, with a white pull-handle on the front, its purpose spelled out plainly in capital letters.
"FOR FIRE," it reads, then continues simply: "OPEN THEN PULL DOWN HOOK."
Whenever that lever is pulled, a metal wheel inside the box turns and transmits a signal via telegraph to the Boston Fire Department.
That's the way it was over 150 years ago, when the world's first fire-alarm telegraph boxes were invented here and horse-drawn carriages rattled down the city's cobblestone streets.
And that's the way it is today, in this age of enhanced 911, two-way radios, cellphones, and GPS devices, leaving some to wonder why the city still operates a telegraph alarm system. Many cities and towns have abandoned theirs, deeming them obsolete and too expensive to maintain. But Boston - and close neighbors Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville - have held fast to the system.
Boston fire officials say the wireless world hasn't negated the system's value. They point to the Sept. 11 attacks, when cellphone networks became overloaded. And in a blackout, they say, people can't recharge their cellphones.
The Boston Fire Department has no plans to change the street-corner box alarms, according to John P. Henderson, superintendent of its Fire Alarm Division, which oversees communications and dispatching for the department. "It's a great, great system," he said. "To have it, gives peace of mind."
Born before the phone
The world's first municipal fire-alarm system was developed by an engineer named Moses Farmer and Dr. William Channing, a Harvard-educated Bostonian who preferred tinkering with electronics to practicing medicine. Their revolutionary creation was installed in Boston in 1851, more than two decades before Alexander Graham Bell gained his patent for the telephone, and consisted of 40 miles of wire and 45 boxes. It quickly became a national model, and cities and towns across the country installed similar systems that were manufactured by the Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph Co. in Newton Upper Falls. By 1890, there were Gamewell systems in 500 cities and towns across the country.
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