Question:
Per the talk about 911 ... 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. I was wondering if other cities have removed their boxes. They've been gone in Trenton NJ for years. Actually, when I was a child, I was confused by emergency training. I thought you would use the telephone to call police (dial Operator), but would have to run to the nearest pull box to call the fire department. 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. Calls could also come in via a telephone, either the fire emergency number or from the Bell Operator, it was answered on a small Call Director phone. [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.

Answer: -In Milwaukee WI they discontinued the pull boxes in 1988 due to abuse of them. The pull box was in a police call box on all the corners. Pull box one side unlocked and on other side police call phone. Locked. About half of the police call boxes were removed in 1988 the other half are still in service. You can still see quite a lot of them on corners. (Painted blue) These are for the police to use to call in to stations.

-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.