The Fashion Accessory That Prevents False Alarms?
The first iPhone was released in the United States in June of 2007. Cell phones were already popular by then — in 2000, according to one study (pdf), about a quarter of the U.S. population had one; by 2005, about two-thirds of Americans had one. Today, that number seems adorably small; by most measures, roughly 98% of Americans have smartphones. And for firefighting, that’s a really great thing. Virtually all of us can summon help if we see something ablaze — all we need to do is reach into the device in our pockets and dial 911.
But of course, fires predate cell phones and, for that matter, landlines as well. (And, by extension, 911.) And fire departments needed a way to be notified when something required their assistance. Early solutions, according to Cincinnati Magazine, included “a guy on a downtown roof pounding on a huge drum. The city’s several volunteer fire brigades would interpret the noise thusly: Attention! There’s a fire somewhere! Grab your leather buckets and try to find it! If another brigade gets there first, get into a big fistfight with them while the fire grows!” (I’m not entirely sure if that’s true or satire, but either way, it’s funny.) Guys on drums, though, required someone to be on the lookout at all times — and when it comes to fire prevention, it’s better to crowdsource the solution to average citizens. So in the mid-1800s, two Boston-based inventors, William Francis Channing and Moses G. Farmer, came up with a solution: telegraph-powered fire alarm call boxes, like the one seen above.
And seemingly immediately thereafter, jokester adolescents came up with an idea of their own: causing false alarms.
Until they were given really bulky bracelets.
Fire alarm call boxes are rather simple to use. Municipalities placed them all over their cities, typically on poles that carried telegraph wires. If you saw something on fire, you’d run over to the nearest fire alarm box and trigger the alarm. Doing so sent a signal to a fire station or dispatcher with the ID number (and by extension, the location) of the box whose alarm was triggered, and firefighters could go to the scene to address the situation. It was a good, efficient solution — but it came at a cost of false alarms. The above-linked Cincinnati Magazine article asserts that these boxes were “the source for 95 percent of false alarms, including an embarrassing percentage triggered by people who thought they were mailing a letter.” And sometimes those false alarms led to tragic results. With firetrucks flying through the city, the occasional wreck was unavoidable; in one case (via Snopes), a firefighter lost his life in one such accident.
As a result, fire departments redesigned these boxes over and over to prevent such pranks. One design from 1937, according to a newspaper report, came “equipped with an ear-shattering siren that sets up a wail audible for blocks (much to the discomfiture of anyone using it unlawfully).” In 1948, Teaneck, New Jersey tried to “combat an epidemic of false alarms with power,” announcing that “all the town’s 65 alarm boxes will be dusted with a special powder which retains fingerprints.” But one idea that lasted decades was the “wrist lock” — a device that attached to the alarm-puller’s wrist when he or she trigger the alarm. Here’s an animated gif of one in action (via this video), but we’ll talk through it in case the gif doesn’t load.
This anti-prank device, seen as early as the late 1930s and as late as the 1970s, made it very hard for a would-be prankster to avoid being caught. Unlike the box pictured at the top of this story, the boxes that employed this mechanism were triggered from below. To call the fire department, the alarm-pulled reached into the box from underneath, grabbed the alarm trigger, and pulled down. When they did so, the bottom of the box would come off and remain attached to the puller’s wrist.
When the firefighters arrived, the not-so-cool wristband could be easily removed — the firefighters had keys that unlocked the accessory. If the person pulling the alarm was legitimately calling for help, no harm was done (except maybe for a minor wrist ache). If not, the person could be handcuffed with actual handcuffs and taken into custody. Either way, the firefighters could reset the alarm, replacing the bottom panel and resetting the “trap.”
It’s not clear how many of these boxes were installed in the United States, nor how many pranksters they nabbed. But you’ll rarely, if ever, see one around today. As 911 services have become ubiquitous, new fire alarm boxes are rarely installed. While many cities still have theirs operational, just in case, they are often connected to two-way speaker systems that give dispatchers a way to verify the veracity of the emergency before sending out a team of firefighters.
Bonus fact: On November 9, 1872, a fire broke out in Boston, Massachusetts that was so destructive, it was later called “The Great Boston Fire of 1872.” According to the Boston Fire Historical Society, the blaze destroyed 776 buildings across 65 acres. Part of the reason the fire was so bad was because of an epidemic — not one that hit humans, but one that struck horses. Earlier that year, the United States and Canada were struck by an equine influenza strain that, per Wikipedia’s editors, left “horses and mules incapacitated by a week or two” and claimed the lives of about 1% of those stricken. The flu was particularly bad in Boston in early November, and at the time, Boston’s fire trucks were horse-drawn. Without the horses to bring the fire crews to the blaze, firemen had to do the (literal) heavy lifting. This delayed the response only by a few minutes, but that was enough to allow the initial fire to rage out of control. The Great Boston Fire claimed 30 lives, including the lives of a dozen firefighters.
From the Archives: How Horses Created Firehouse Poles: What goes up but does not come down? A hungry horse searching for food upstairs in a firehouse. (At least, it doesn’t come down easily.)