Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Either everyone, and welcome to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Volcon, and today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a cool piece of historic technology
Speaker 1: that to this very day, at least as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, is still working in a certain
Speaker 1: form in some places. In some places, yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about that. This was actually Lauren's suggestion. We were looking
Speaker 1: at different fire prevention type technologies. Well, we had gotten
Speaker 1: a reader request, a listener request, because this is an
Speaker 1: audio podcast and I and I do not have the
Speaker 1: request open in front of me, so I apologize to
Speaker 1: the nice human person who sent this in. UM, someone
Speaker 1: requested that we do uh episode about fire alarms, And
Speaker 1: in initial research, I there's so much that that is
Speaker 1: commercial out there that's immediately available and uh, and we
Speaker 1: were kind of running up to a deadline. But I
Speaker 1: realized that, um, that the original fire alarm system a
Speaker 1: telegraph system in Boston in the eighteen hundreds, eighteen fifty. Fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this turned out to be an amazing topic. So
Speaker 1: we decided to tackle this system that was installed in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two. We're not there yet, by the way,
Speaker 1: not at all. We're gonna we're gonna work our way
Speaker 1: up to eighteen fifty two. But it was installed in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two and it's still working today. Now. We'll
Speaker 1: address that in greater detail as the episode goes on. So,
Speaker 1: but it's still really kind of remarkable to think of this,
Speaker 1: this system that's over a hundred fifty years old still running.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what necessitated it now. Really to
Speaker 1: think about it is to talk about the rise of
Speaker 1: the construction of cities, which often ended up being rapid
Speaker 1: and unplanned and made a material that we will generously
Speaker 1: called flammable. Right there, there wasn't so many steel beams
Speaker 1: and concrete being used, and even say even even brick
Speaker 1: houses would have wooden window frames or door frames or
Speaker 1: flooring or whatever, and if a fire got hot enough,
Speaker 1: it could actually cause those materials to burst into flame,
Speaker 1: even if they didn't have direct contact with the flames themselves.
Speaker 1: It would create what is really called a firestorm, where
Speaker 1: the fire gets so hot it starts to be able
Speaker 1: to it just sort of balloons out of control. And uh,
Speaker 1: an early example of this one that was absolutely devastating.
Speaker 1: We have to look back all the way to sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty six the Great Fire of London. Now, this affected
Speaker 1: the city of London, which is a square mile. That's
Speaker 1: tiny compared to metropolitan London, right, but this fire devastated
Speaker 1: that part of London and stretched a little bit beyond
Speaker 1: those borders, depending upon you know which side you're talking about,
Speaker 1: destroying more than ten thousand houses in the process. And
Speaker 1: it's it was an enormously devastating fire. And so that
Speaker 1: was an example of something that really showed that there
Speaker 1: was a need now that we had these cities that
Speaker 1: were really densely populated with lots and lots of houses
Speaker 1: that are built incredibly close together, some of them so
Speaker 1: close that even in an alleyway, the the upper stories
Speaker 1: would be in contact with each other. So you might
Speaker 1: have enough room at the at the ground level to
Speaker 1: walk through, but if you were to look up, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't see sky. Wow, that's kind of terrifying. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a little creepy, you know. It's almost like every
Speaker 1: alleyway is really just becomes a tunnel because these these
Speaker 1: upper stories of these buildings are Yeah, so before in Boston,
Speaker 1: here's how a typical fire would be reported. Uh so,
Speaker 1: so someone would be assigned the task in in a
Speaker 1: particular neighbor hood or area of town that if if
Speaker 1: fire broke out, they would um go run to the
Speaker 1: nearest church and and ring the church bells. And you
Speaker 1: had people also who would carry wooden rattles and rattle
Speaker 1: them or just holler. Yeah, so Boston ended up having
Speaker 1: this this real problem. I mean they called it hallooing
Speaker 1: a fire because really you're just kind of hooting and
Speaker 1: hollering trying to get people's attention. But that's not terribly precise.
Speaker 1: In fact, it could be very confusing. If anyone has
Speaker 1: ever been in a large city and heard a noise,
Speaker 1: it could be really hard to detect where that noise
Speaker 1: is coming from, let alone a precise location. It's hard
Speaker 1: just to even figure out the general direction sometimes just
Speaker 1: the way sound travels and bounces around. Sure, and the
Speaker 1: speed of response is so important in these kind of things,
Speaker 1: especially back in in those days, when containing a fire
Speaker 1: would absolutely I mean not that that's not true these days,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it could spread so quickly. I mean they
Speaker 1: you know, every the basic building materials that were a
Speaker 1: lot of these buildings were made of were very flammable.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot of flame retardant type material being
Speaker 1: mixed in at that time, so you had a serious
Speaker 1: need to have a quick response. And unfortunately what was
Speaker 1: happening was that fire engines would leave the fire station
Speaker 1: with no way of knowing where the actual fire was,
Speaker 1: and so they essentially go off in all different directions
Speaker 1: trying to find the fire. It was really only if
Speaker 1: a fire had gotten so huge as you could see it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and by then getting it under control is even more difficult.
Speaker 1: So at the time you would have a fire foreman
Speaker 1: who would actually shout directions through a trumpet, like a
Speaker 1: speaking trumpet, all right, like a cheerleaders, Yeah, megaphone, any
Speaker 1: other than cheerleaders, that's right. Uh. And so one of
Speaker 1: the awards that would be given away to firefighters for
Speaker 1: distinguished service was a silver trumpet that was kind of saying,
Speaker 1: in the execution of your duty, you have done amazing service.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that a lot of these firefighters
Speaker 1: were volunteer firefighters. This was not the necessarily, not in
Speaker 1: Boston anyway. It's not necessarily the era of private firefighting companies,
Speaker 1: which were also a thing. To the point where there
Speaker 1: were companies that would compete with one another or turn
Speaker 1: away service based on Yeah, they'd show up and to
Speaker 1: be like, we'll put out that fire, but first you
Speaker 1: gotta pay us. Not the most altruistic of firefighting efforts.
Speaker 1: But in this case we're talking about citizens of volunteers. Really,
Speaker 1: but that was before eighty five. Now, in eighteen forty four,
Speaker 1: a certain inventor created something that would change the world. Actually,
Speaker 1: let me take this back just a tiny bit, because
Speaker 1: you were you were about to talk about Samuel Morris.
Speaker 1: I am, but you you you have something to to interject.
Speaker 1: I do have something to interject. The thing is that
Speaker 1: that Samuel Morris was not the inventor of the telegraph.
Speaker 1: He wasn't even the sole inventor of Morse code. UM.
Speaker 1: The first known telegraph line was erected in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven by Charles Whitstone and William Cook in the UK.
Speaker 1: UM this was a line between Euston and Camden Town
Speaker 1: on the London and Burningham Railway. And uh it was
Speaker 1: this complex five line, five needles system that would point
Speaker 1: to different letters on a grid by reversing the direction
Speaker 1: of the current flowing through these five wires and um
Speaker 1: it was it was pretty unwieldy, those those you know,
Speaker 1: having five wires per terminal was really expensive and really complex,
Speaker 1: especially for eighteen thirty seven. But these those two gentlemen
Speaker 1: had been kind of independently working through the concepts that
Speaker 1: Michael Fairday were talking was talking about and in creating
Speaker 1: this telegraph technology. Samuel Morse was the first one to
Speaker 1: complete a line here in the States. That line opened
Speaker 1: up between d C and Baltimore in um. The first
Speaker 1: message he sent in his early version of Morse code
Speaker 1: was what hath god wrocked? Yeah? And um, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's a famous message. That boy little apocalyptic there in
Speaker 1: a way. But yeah, so you might be wondering, how
Speaker 1: do does this system actually work? And it's it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So uh so we you know what we've talked about
Speaker 1: circuits quite a bit on this podcast. But a circuit,
Speaker 1: you know, that's essentially a pathway that electricity can take. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have what is called an open circuit, that
Speaker 1: means that electricity can't pass all the way through the circuit,
Speaker 1: there's something there's a gap there, so it can no
Speaker 1: longer travel and continue its path. A closed circuit means
Speaker 1: that it's completely closed and yeah, and an electricity can
Speaker 1: go all the way through the pathway. So if you
Speaker 1: were to have an open circuit, a telegraph line that's
Speaker 1: an open circuit, and you had a switch, in this
Speaker 1: case a telegraph key that when you press the SWI
Speaker 1: which it closes the circuit so that electricity can flow through.
Speaker 1: On the other end of that circuit is a receiving
Speaker 1: station that when it receives this an electro magnet activates
Speaker 1: because we know, you know, when you have electricity going
Speaker 1: through an electromagnet, it creates a magnetic force. The magnetic
Speaker 1: force pulls on one end of a lever. The other
Speaker 1: end of the lever is attached to a pen that
Speaker 1: comes into contact with a rolling piece of paper, and
Speaker 1: so as you hold down the key, the pen stays
Speaker 1: in contact with the paper because electricity is flowing through
Speaker 1: and it's activated that electro magnetic coil. When you let
Speaker 1: go of the key, electricity stops flowing the magnetic coil
Speaker 1: let's go, and the pen the lever drops, lifting the
Speaker 1: pen off the paper or removing the paper from the pen.
Speaker 1: It all depends on the actual implementation of this technology
Speaker 1: because there were different models of telegraph machines. So by
Speaker 1: doing a series of taps, you can create dots and
Speaker 1: dashes on the paper as the pen moves on and
Speaker 1: off of it. That and earn would be interpreted as
Speaker 1: Morse code, So you would have a certain series of
Speaker 1: dots and dashes representing each letter of the alphabet. Also numbers,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Uh. So that was your your
Speaker 1: basic telegraph station. You had the sending and the receiving
Speaker 1: and then you might have another circuit that is on
Speaker 1: the receiving end where they can send messages back right,
Speaker 1: and and that specific battery switch electromagnet rig was Morse's invention.
Speaker 1: There we go, and that would become really important in
Speaker 1: what we're about to discuss the idea of using this
Speaker 1: in a way beyond sending a message and making it
Speaker 1: an actual alert system. So that comes up to eighteen
Speaker 1: forty four. Morse has has completed this and demonstrated it
Speaker 1: and it's shown to be an effective means of communication.
Speaker 1: That was, yeah, it was. It was really popular in
Speaker 1: in the news and you know, ever, it was what
Speaker 1: everyone was talking about in scientific circles because finally you
Speaker 1: could get news from from one city to another city
Speaker 1: in right faster than any other means of transportation at
Speaker 1: that time. So eighteen forty five, a year after Morse
Speaker 1: has really has really broken this open in the US,
Speaker 1: a mandate. Dr William F. Channing, a native of Boston
Speaker 1: and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and of
Speaker 1: Harvard with a medical degree, published an article in the
Speaker 1: Boston Daily Advertiser, and it was all about creating a
Speaker 1: telegraph based fire alarm system for Boston. It was it
Speaker 1: was an article that was saying, hey, this dude, Morse
Speaker 1: has this pretty cool thing. We can use that thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and the problems that we have right now in
Speaker 1: Boston mainly that by the time an alarm gets to
Speaker 1: a fire station, it's almost too late, and the fire
Speaker 1: station doesn't even really know where the fire is. This
Speaker 1: solves both of those problems because the communication is immediate,
Speaker 1: and because of the way we can design this, it
Speaker 1: can be precise so that every single alarm station that
Speaker 1: we erect that's part of the system will have its
Speaker 1: own unique identifier, so that way we know where the
Speaker 1: fire is, not just that it's happened, but where it is.
Speaker 1: And that way we have much faster response time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he he was recommending not only the the application
Speaker 1: of this technology, but an organization system built around it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He had an entire infrastructure that he proposed, and this
Speaker 1: is what eventually gets put in place in Boston more
Speaker 1: or less. I mean, it's almost exactly what he had proposed,
Speaker 1: although it did have to go through some refining and
Speaker 1: tweaking because this was a brand new system. No one
Speaker 1: had tried it before. And of course, as anyone who
Speaker 1: has worked with any type of technology knows, bugs will
Speaker 1: pop up. As you know, you'll you'll think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: based upon electronic principles, that should work perfectly, perfectly, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna figure this. Oh, this switch was turned in
Speaker 1: open form, it should be closed. But so so he
Speaker 1: joined up with an electrical engineer, Um, Moses chief Farmer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Moses chief Farmer. Interesting guy. He had worked in a
Speaker 1: civil engineers office for a while. He was also a
Speaker 1: school principal for a while. Uh, and he had an
Speaker 1: affinity for machines. In fact, the first machine he had
Speaker 1: built that I could find anyway. He may have worked
Speaker 1: on other ones before this, but he created a machine
Speaker 1: that could print paper window shades. Uh. And then he
Speaker 1: when Morse really got the telegraph going, he became interested
Speaker 1: in telegraph machines, began to work on them, and eventually
Speaker 1: was put in charge of the telegraph line between Boston
Speaker 1: and Newberryport, Massachusetts in eighteen forty eight, and actually got
Speaker 1: to the point where he had sort of a managerial position.
Speaker 1: He would help open new telegraph offices in the area
Speaker 1: and make sure that the connections were there and every
Speaker 1: thing along those lines. He and Dr Channing kind of
Speaker 1: put their heads together and came up with this this
Speaker 1: UH proposal. And now in eighteen forty eight, Farmer actually
Speaker 1: invented an electric striking apparatus for the fire Alarm service
Speaker 1: because part of this overall infrastructure they were talking about
Speaker 1: was not just something that would notify the fire stations
Speaker 1: that there was a fire, but also have an alarm
Speaker 1: system to alert the citizens that a fire was in
Speaker 1: the area. Yeah. Yeah, something that would simultaneously alert UM
Speaker 1: all the other like like you know, from a grand
Speaker 1: central station, it would alert all of the stations along
Speaker 1: with the citizenship, right exactly. So this way, if you've
Speaker 1: ever lived in a place that has UH an orchestrated
Speaker 1: alarm system, something like in here in Atlanta, we talked
Speaker 1: about tornado alarms that if you hear the tornado sirens
Speaker 1: go off, you know there's a tornado in the area. Uh.
Speaker 1: The this is sort of a similar thing. The bells
Speaker 1: would ring uh to alert citizens. And ideally, in the
Speaker 1: actual proposal, they had talked about connecting all the church
Speaker 1: bells in Boston to this system, so that they would
Speaker 1: all ring simultaneously and simultaneously in a pattern that would
Speaker 1: identify the location of the fire. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: once you knew what the different patterns were, you would
Speaker 1: know where the fire was no matter where you were
Speaker 1: in the city of Boston, by the sound of the
Speaker 1: bells ringing. As it turns out, getting all the bells
Speaker 1: in the city to ring simultaneously is somewhat of a
Speaker 1: non trivial problem. That's complex, yeah, trying to get I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about physical circuits here. These are physical wires,
Speaker 1: like over over the air wires. I mean, these are
Speaker 1: wires that are above ground, uh, you know, held up
Speaker 1: on rooftops of houses, supported by glass insulators. You know.
Speaker 1: They and in fact, there's actually some discrepancy about whether
Speaker 1: or not the original wires were all yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean because at the time the the insulation um insulation
Speaker 1: technology was was glass tar pitch. Yeah, there are no
Speaker 1: plastics there were there were no plastics. UM. They started
Speaker 1: getting into UM two ceramics and stuff like that a
Speaker 1: little bit later, but that wouldn't be for another couple
Speaker 1: of decades, I don't think now. And Channing's writing he
Speaker 1: refers to it as being insulated, and then other writings
Speaker 1: referred to them being not insulated. So here's the thing,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about historical documents and historical uh events,
Speaker 1: and this is a time where this is before the
Speaker 1: digital age. Clearly we're talking to eighteen fifties. The records
Speaker 1: are UH sparse, and not all of them are not
Speaker 1: all of them agree with one another. We we we
Speaker 1: depend on correspondence and patents and stuff like that, Saper articles.
Speaker 1: I have a whole new respect for Holly and Tracy
Speaker 1: over at us plug. We need to we need to
Speaker 1: have a little bell sound every time we plug one
Speaker 1: of our our sister podcasts UM. But they do amazing work.
Speaker 1: And yeah, when this really opens up your eyes to
Speaker 1: how complex it becomes. So we've got Farmer and we've
Speaker 1: got Channing working on this proposed system, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: until eighteen fifty one that they actually presented their proposal
Speaker 1: to the city, the Boston City government, and they argued
Speaker 1: that this would be a way that would save a
Speaker 1: lot some money in the long run, because fires were
Speaker 1: still in a big issue, big fear they happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a scary thing that could completely devastate an
Speaker 1: entire city, or at least districts of a city. There
Speaker 1: are multiple districts within the city of Boston, um, and
Speaker 1: actually their proposal incorporated that so that each district had
Speaker 1: its own set of boxes. And in fact, as we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the way that boxes were encoded, it would
Speaker 1: tell the operator first which district was being affected, and
Speaker 1: then tell the operator which box was the one that
Speaker 1: had been activated. So they send this proposal to the
Speaker 1: Boston City Government in eighteen fifty one, and the government
Speaker 1: approves it and work begins on the system on September seven,
Speaker 1: eight fifty one. Originally, depending upon whom you ask, because
Speaker 1: there are discrepancies, Uh, this system had three box circuits,
Speaker 1: three bell circuits, forty alarm boxes some into Yeah, it
Speaker 1: all depends. Like there's one source that was very definitively
Speaker 1: saying no, there were forty one boxes, and another one
Speaker 1: that says no, there were thirty nine. I'm going with
Speaker 1: forty forty ish boxes uh sixteen to nineteen alarm bills.
Speaker 1: And the one central office, yes, one central office which
Speaker 1: was this was the office through which all communication would pass.
Speaker 1: So the idea being that when someone would would activate
Speaker 1: one of these alarm boxes, the message would come to
Speaker 1: this central office that the operator the central office could
Speaker 1: then pass communication to the nearest fire stations. Originally it
Speaker 1: was not recorded on paper, um, the way that we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. Originally there it was just manned
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day. Right. Channing had said that
Speaker 1: a paper recording would be valuable because, for one thing,
Speaker 1: it would help keep track of all the different times
Speaker 1: that the alarm was signaled, because even in the early days,
Speaker 1: there was worry that prankish people something would be missed,
Speaker 1: or that you know, um, eventually there would be finger
Speaker 1: pointing that would happen due to some terrible something or another,
Speaker 1: or someone just ends up having a hankering for triggering
Speaker 1: alarms when there are no fires at all. It was
Speaker 1: an idea of this way we keep a record of it.
Speaker 1: It becomes more of an official thing it uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that'll cut down on misuse of the system. Was really
Speaker 1: that was the main focus, but also just to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on different parts of the city, saying, well,
Speaker 1: this one part of the city gets uh, there are
Speaker 1: more alarmed trip there than anywhere else. That would bring
Speaker 1: were and Boston would have the first the first paper
Speaker 1: recorder system for one of these telegraph fire alarms. But
Speaker 1: but that was a few years. Yeah, but that was
Speaker 1: that was what Channing had hoped to do at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, but it would be a few years before
Speaker 1: that happens. So what happens is that the the operator
Speaker 1: sees it, they send out the alert to the to
Speaker 1: the uh the respective fire stations, there might be more
Speaker 1: than one, to say this alarm box was triggered, you
Speaker 1: need to go there, and then the firefighters would there.
Speaker 1: There's be someone at the fire fire station who would
Speaker 1: be manning the receiving station to get that message, who
Speaker 1: would then pull the bell to to alert the firefighters.
Speaker 1: Let's go and give them the message of this is
Speaker 1: where you need to go. This is the alarm box
Speaker 1: that was triggered. Go to that location and and fight
Speaker 1: the fire. So, uh, it was an ingenious system. He
Speaker 1: had proposed that the power would come from two sources
Speaker 1: outside the facility, so that if one source failed, the
Speaker 1: other one would continue. And later they were able to
Speaker 1: have a gasoline power generator as well, so that way,
Speaker 1: even if the entire city lost power, the system would
Speaker 1: still remain viable. So telephone lines go down, electric power
Speaker 1: lines go down. This system, yeah, so it's still working.
Speaker 1: That was and you know, it's one of the the
Speaker 1: things that really said apart from a lot of other
Speaker 1: systems that people were proposing at the time. So there
Speaker 1: were about forty miles of wire in this original system. Actually,
Speaker 1: depending upon the source, it gets up to about forty
Speaker 1: eight miles. It was technically twenty four miles. But they
Speaker 1: made redundant circuits. So that was another really brilliant thing
Speaker 1: about the system. Exactly. Yeah, the redundancy is so important
Speaker 1: because you're talking about fire. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: dangerous and destructive force and above ground cables, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And Boston has been known from time to time to
Speaker 1: have snow and ice storms very occasionally, so it gets
Speaker 1: wicked cold in Boston and so sometimes these these lines
Speaker 1: can break and so by creating redundancy, it made the
Speaker 1: made the system more robust. Uh. So there are two
Speaker 1: sets of these lines forty miles or so forty eight
Speaker 1: miles of wire, and the actual call boxes or alarm
Speaker 1: boxes were locked. They had a lock on them. They
Speaker 1: were painted black at first. Right until about the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: only trusted people in the area were given keys and um,
Speaker 1: and there were instructions on the little key pop. I've
Speaker 1: seen a couple of museum museum pieces and uh. When
Speaker 1: eventually the system got too big to handle and they
Speaker 1: realized they were doing everyone a disservice by keeping these
Speaker 1: locked and making someone who wanted to report a fire
Speaker 1: go find one of these people who held a key. Right.
Speaker 1: Like you know, say someone is on vacation out of town.
Speaker 1: That makes it a little more difficult. Well, when they
Speaker 1: get back, we can tell them that their house burned down. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this it was locked away. But if you were
Speaker 1: to unlock the system, open up the door. Uh, inside
Speaker 1: wasn't interesting pairing. There was a hand crank and there
Speaker 1: was a telegraph key. Now, the hand crank was what
Speaker 1: the the person was expected to use. The person, the
Speaker 1: person who had been entrusted with the key, and by
Speaker 1: turning the crank it would be the same effect as
Speaker 1: if you were sending a telegraph from a sending station
Speaker 1: to a receiving station. The crank would turn a wheel,
Speaker 1: and the wheel would have on it essentially contacts. It
Speaker 1: would it would push a little spring powered UH circuit
Speaker 1: closed and complete the circuit to the central station. So
Speaker 1: turning the crank turns the wheel. The wheel turns around
Speaker 1: and around, and that creates this pattern of dots and
Speaker 1: dashes that's unique to that particular box. Each box has
Speaker 1: its own patterns. That way, when the operator receives it,
Speaker 1: they can this is box forty one, which happens to
Speaker 1: be on the street of such and such and such
Speaker 1: and such, and so the first bit of the wheel
Speaker 1: would actually have the UH the the district number, so
Speaker 1: that they know generally what part of Boston it was in,
Speaker 1: and then the next part would actually have the boxes identity,
Speaker 1: and the wheel, by the way was or the crank
Speaker 1: was waited so that when you were done turning it,
Speaker 1: it would move into its rest position, so that would
Speaker 1: be ready to give the exact right information as soon
Speaker 1: as you started turning it again. Instructions were, by the way,
Speaker 1: to to only do this once, because if you kept
Speaker 1: repeating the signal, it would clog, it could interfere with itself. Exactly.
Speaker 1: If you were to continue this, it could end up
Speaker 1: causing confusion. You wouldn't necessarily know where the beginning and
Speaker 1: end of the message was. That could cost you valuable minutes,
Speaker 1: which is a huge thing when you're talking about fighting
Speaker 1: a fire that could go out of control, particularly in
Speaker 1: a city again that has these problems of this really
Speaker 1: dense population and flammable building materials. So the idea was
Speaker 1: that the through batteries and this backup generator and the
Speaker 1: incoming power, that the system would always be available. And
Speaker 1: assuming that at least one of the two the two circuits, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're in good ship, You're now. This is really
Speaker 1: kind of an ingenious way of making this possible for
Speaker 1: even someone who has no idea how telegraphs work. All
Speaker 1: they have to do is turn a crank once that's it. Well,
Speaker 1: they have to unlock the box first, obviously. Now, if
Speaker 1: you've got someone there at the station or at the
Speaker 1: alarm box, someone who generally speaking is with the firefighters,
Speaker 1: who has trained in the telegraph system. They could use
Speaker 1: the actual key, the telegraph key that was also inside
Speaker 1: the box to send specific messages back to the operators.
Speaker 1: So let's say that the fire itself is around the
Speaker 1: corner from where the alarm box is, that might be
Speaker 1: valuable information for more incoming engine saying now there's you
Speaker 1: need to come up through blah blah blah street in
Speaker 1: order to get to where the fire is. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I could give more information, but that
Speaker 1: was generally meant for people who are part of this
Speaker 1: whole system, not not the average citizen. Yeah, they also
Speaker 1: did eventually, although they never managed to sink up all
Speaker 1: of the church bells in the city. Um. They didn't
Speaker 1: stalled alarm bells in the boxes that would um. Once
Speaker 1: once the operator had sent out a signal to the
Speaker 1: relevant fire stations, some of some of the boxes alarms
Speaker 1: would sound, letting anyone else who was nearby in the
Speaker 1: area know that there's this call box down here has
Speaker 1: reported a fire, right and and the way that would
Speaker 1: work is exactly the same way really as the telegraph machine.
Speaker 1: You had an electromagnetic coil in there that would pull
Speaker 1: back a lever that was on a spring, so the
Speaker 1: spring would create tension, and once the electromagnetics signal went away,
Speaker 1: once the electricity went out, it would release that and
Speaker 1: it would strike the lever would strike a bell, and
Speaker 1: it would do this multiple times, and you know, several
Speaker 1: times a second. So you would get that did into things, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would. It was codd. For example, with with box
Speaker 1: forty one, it would be a bell strike four times,
Speaker 1: a slight pause, and a bell strike one. Wow. I
Speaker 1: did not know that. I didn't come across that. That's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. So when you get up in to
Speaker 1: the thousands, you gotta count a lot because, by the way,
Speaker 1: when when it first started, obviously we're talking, you know,
Speaker 1: about forty or forty ish boxes, but eventually there would
Speaker 1: be more than two thousand of these installed throughout Boston,
Speaker 1: some of them in public and private buildings, some of
Speaker 1: them months on actual streets. Uh. And of course the
Speaker 1: mechanism would change, as far as the interface would change.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that that interface would change, but the
Speaker 1: basic principle of what we're talking about here has remained
Speaker 1: largely unchanged when they started building it. Yeah, two, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Fifty two was just when it was complete, limented Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even even when I say completed, there were still
Speaker 1: lots of bugs to work out, So wouldn't be until
Speaker 1: probably the mid eighteen fifties that the system was what
Speaker 1: you would call robust. Early times they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we just found out something else that we did not
Speaker 1: anticipate when we first started building this thing. Yeah, two
Speaker 1: was the official installation date. April. So, um, when did
Speaker 1: the first alarm come in? Not even a full day
Speaker 1: old and the alarm comes in. There's actually another story
Speaker 1: that will get to later on that's very similar to this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: April eighteen fifty two. The system is up, the systems
Speaker 1: in place, they can identify what boxes is sounding the alarm,
Speaker 1: and it did not take but a day's five PM,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, because people would take note of
Speaker 1: when the alarms came in. The first alarm was received
Speaker 1: over the system and uh. Actually Moses Farmer would become
Speaker 1: the superintendent of the fire alarm system and uh it
Speaker 1: was shown to be effective, although again they had to
Speaker 1: tweak it multiple times over the next few years. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: around eighteen fifty five, that's when a man named John
Speaker 1: Nelson Gamewell, who was a postmaster and telegraph company agent
Speaker 1: from South Carolina attended a lecture that Dr Channing held
Speaker 1: about the telegraph system, and that same year, just a
Speaker 1: little bit later, a game Well ended up purchasing the
Speaker 1: regional rights for marketing the system in the Southern United States,
Speaker 1: South and the West, I believe. Yeah, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a well the Southern United States and the western territories.
Speaker 1: We don't really talk about them in the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, so that you might be noticing eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: if you know your United States history, something major is
Speaker 1: about to happen. Uh, And that actually shakes things up
Speaker 1: a bit. But in eighteen fifties seven, Channing and Farmer
Speaker 1: are issued a patent, and that patent is for the
Speaker 1: invention that they called improvement in electric magnetic fire alarm
Speaker 1: Telegraphs for cities. That's specific. Um. And it was interesting
Speaker 1: I read this patent, this patent they actually filed for
Speaker 1: it in eighteen fifty five and they got the patent issued. Um.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because you know the I explained the system
Speaker 1: they used where they went with what was essentially an
Speaker 1: open circuit that would close as these wheels would turn right. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had also allowed for a version where it would
Speaker 1: be a closed circuit. So in other words, electricity is
Speaker 1: always flowing through the circuit, but when you turn the wheel,
Speaker 1: the wheel interrupts that electricity and it creates the same
Speaker 1: sort of code. It just does it using an open
Speaker 1: you know, open interruptions as opposed to closed signals. So
Speaker 1: it was they were saying, you know, you could do
Speaker 1: this either way. Yeah, it doesn't doesn't matter which one
Speaker 1: you choose. It's going to work. You just have to
Speaker 1: be consistent. That's the only important part is being consistent.
Speaker 1: And the redundancy they stressed that as well. But the
Speaker 1: and the patent is, by the way, it's available to
Speaker 1: read if you go I use Google Patent search, it
Speaker 1: actually goes back further than a lot of the other Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you just put in improvement and electric magnetic
Speaker 1: fire alarm telegraphs for cities and will pop right up.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a fun read. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: as pa, let's go. It's it's actually I would argue
Speaker 1: it's easier to understand than a lot of modern patents.
Speaker 1: A lot of modern patents fall into this, uh, this
Speaker 1: habit of using uh yeah, well they're using language that
Speaker 1: is specifically has been specifically evolved for patents, and it
Speaker 1: gets you know, those who was it. It's it's something
Speaker 1: in the art. It's like those who are knowledgeable in
Speaker 1: the art will see that blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You start reading it and you're thinking, this sounds like
Speaker 1: this sounds like this patent could easily be one quarter
Speaker 1: of the length if they dropped all those kind of
Speaker 1: kind of pretension. Yeah. Yeah, and this one pre dates
Speaker 1: a lot of that, so it's pretty straightforward. I think
Speaker 1: the patent issued was in the seventeen thousands at that point,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty early in the patent system. So eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, a couple of things happened. First of all,
Speaker 1: Moses Farmer continues to innovate in different areas. He he
Speaker 1: was really one of those, yeah, one of those engineer
Speaker 1: years back when things were just starting to really take off,
Speaker 1: like uh, like lights, lightbulbs. He invented yep, he invented
Speaker 1: an incandescent electric lamp. Um. He didn't invent the light
Speaker 1: bulb or anything. Of course Edison didn't either, but uh,
Speaker 1: he he invented a type of lamp that was one
Speaker 1: of the earlier incandescent electric lamps, and the same year
Speaker 1: game Well purchased the patents, or he purchased everything from
Speaker 1: Channing and Farmer for the for the telegraph system. Yep.
Speaker 1: He wanted to start installing this in cities everywhere he went.
Speaker 1: He saw the value in it, and he purchased the
Speaker 1: entire essentially the entire intellectual property, if you will, of
Speaker 1: how this was done. And Channing and Farmer essentially stepped
Speaker 1: back at this point they had invented it, and now
Speaker 1: they no longer play a direct role. So here's game
Speaker 1: Well eighteen fifty nine. He's bought all this stuff. He's
Speaker 1: ready to go. It's time to become an industrialist. Win.
Speaker 1: The Civil War breaks out, game wells from South Carolina.
Speaker 1: He goes back to South Carolina. At the conclusion of
Speaker 1: the Civil War, the United States government decided to do
Speaker 1: something somewhat controversial for those in the Southern States. They
Speaker 1: seized a lot of patents that were held by Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: It turned out they sold them at public auction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so these are our property, will sell them an auction now,
Speaker 1: So Gamewell loses his patents. Uh. In eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: John F. Kennard goes to Washington, d C. To go
Speaker 1: to one of these auctions. He had planned on purchasing
Speaker 1: the patents that Gamewell had owned, and he had originally
Speaker 1: planned on spending about twenty grand on it. And I
Speaker 1: believe that this was a former employee or a current employee.
Speaker 1: He was he was affiliated, he was affiliated with Game Well. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was ready to pay twenty grand for these patents,
Speaker 1: ended up paying slightly short of ninety bucks for all
Speaker 1: of them, and he gave them. He gave them back
Speaker 1: to games Ago boss, and Gamewell said, I see this
Speaker 1: as the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And they went
Speaker 1: into business together. So they together they created the Game
Speaker 1: Well uh Telegraph Company, the Fire Alarm Telegraph Company, and
Speaker 1: uh so they go into business and start to really
Speaker 1: push this right. Um. Meanwhile, I do want to say, um,
Speaker 1: telegraphy was was big around eighteen sixty one. You got
Speaker 1: the first transcontinental telegraph line out to California, which beat
Speaker 1: the Transcontinental rail Road by eight years. F y. I, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we had a first laying cables easier than
Speaker 1: laying railway ties. As it turns out it is that's true.
Speaker 1: But you know we We We also had the first transatlantic
Speaker 1: cable three years before a transcontinental UM. It failed two
Speaker 1: years after it was installed. But that's beside the point,
Speaker 1: beside the point entirely, um and uh. In those early
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, a few other cities were starting to install
Speaker 1: these telegraph fire alarm systems, you know, usually through citizen
Speaker 1: petitions to the government, going like, they have this cool
Speaker 1: thing that lets them not die in fires. We want that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can we not die in fires? Please? Became a common
Speaker 1: plea Americ in the fifties and sixties. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: one of those things that's not spelled out in the Constitution,
Speaker 1: but you know, you just figure that goes into the
Speaker 1: whole life and liberty thing. Um. In eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: hooked systems were introduced in alarm boxes, and this was
Speaker 1: an alternate to that hand crank, right, so you simply
Speaker 1: pull a hook to generate the correct exactly. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: was this was the ones the Boston system went from,
Speaker 1: well a few alarm boxes in s four went from
Speaker 1: these hand cranks to the hook system. It was decided
Speaker 1: that this was simplified it and it created less of
Speaker 1: a chance of failure because once the hook went back
Speaker 1: into place, the wheel was ready to go. It reduced
Speaker 1: the odds that someone was going to make the wheel
Speaker 1: rotate more than once for one thing, because you just
Speaker 1: had to pull the hook ones. I think kind of
Speaker 1: similar to the to the concept between push button and
Speaker 1: rotary telephones, like it was just less things to screw up, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the few the more idiot proof you make it, the better.
Speaker 1: By eighteen sixty eight, all of the single boxes in
Speaker 1: Boston had been replaced with that type of of of
Speaker 1: alarm system and uh. In eighteen sixty six, Moses Farmer
Speaker 1: continued his innovative work. He patented a self exciting dynamo.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go into any more detail about that.
Speaker 1: I just want you to try and imagine what a
Speaker 1: self exciting dynamo is. If you have an idea of
Speaker 1: what a self exciting dynamo is, and funny ideas are
Speaker 1: better than not funny ideas, you should let us know
Speaker 1: tech stuff at discovery dot com because I want to
Speaker 1: see it, and if you use that email address, we
Speaker 1: both get to see it. All right, But we've got
Speaker 1: a lot more to talk about with this fire system,
Speaker 1: as well as an actual fire that broke out shortly,
Speaker 1: just just two decades after the system was in place,
Speaker 1: and what happened at that time. But before we get
Speaker 1: into that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back and you were going to bring us up
Speaker 1: to date with what eighteen sixteen nine, all right, right,
Speaker 1: or around this time, there were about a hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve alarm boxes and service in Boston. UM systems were
Speaker 1: in place in thirty eight cities across the US, and
Speaker 1: according to game Well, these systems cost um two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars to set up,
Speaker 1: which in the day was was like forty five to
Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy nine thousand dollars and in two
Speaker 1: day's But but just that that's a whole system, that's
Speaker 1: that's an entire system. So when you think about it,
Speaker 1: that's incredibly cheap compared to the devastation of a fire
Speaker 1: of ranger fire, right, you know, it was also right
Speaker 1: and this is this is why they were starting to
Speaker 1: become Over the next couple of decades, they would be
Speaker 1: rolling out in enormous numbers, right, so, partially because okay,
Speaker 1: so um so eighteen seventy two. Uh, this is what
Speaker 1: was known as the Great Boston Fire. It was not
Speaker 1: a pleasant experience. So eighteen seventy two, a fire begins
Speaker 1: in the basement of a five story warehouse. We're still
Speaker 1: not sure what caused it. It was on Kingston and
Speaker 1: as Summer Streets yep November nine two. It might have
Speaker 1: been caused by a coal spark from a steam boiler. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, this is a boiler that you put
Speaker 1: water in it, you create a fire from coal. The
Speaker 1: fire heats up the water, which converts it to steam
Speaker 1: that then can be used to heat a building or
Speaker 1: do other work. So there's some suspicion that perhaps a
Speaker 1: spark from this coal fire is what started it all off.
Speaker 1: At any rate, a fire started and the building was
Speaker 1: what we would call crazy flammable or even inflammable because
Speaker 1: they mean the same thing completely engulfed pretty shortly. Um.
Speaker 1: This this this occurred around seven pm and at seven
Speaker 1: the first fire alarm was triggered, right, and it was
Speaker 1: triggered at Summer in Lincoln Streets at box number fifty two.
Speaker 1: And from what I understand, citizens kind of took their time,
Speaker 1: uh triggering the alarm because people just assume someone else
Speaker 1: had already done it. This, I think falls under that
Speaker 1: category that a lot of us fall victim to the
Speaker 1: idea that someone smarter than us has taken care of
Speaker 1: the problem, that that holds someone else's problem kind of,
Speaker 1: or just that I would do something, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: someone else has already done it. Not. No, it's not
Speaker 1: so much apathy as it is uh absolute uh surety
Speaker 1: that you are not the most competent person in the area.
Speaker 1: I have been victim of this um as I'm sure
Speaker 1: most people have. But at any rate, additional alarms were
Speaker 1: struck at seven four and seven and eight pm, which
Speaker 1: means this was a five alarm fire, which is where
Speaker 1: that phrase comes from. Yes, uh, and you know, with
Speaker 1: the idea being that the more boxes are involved in
Speaker 1: calling out the alarm, the bigger a fire is exactly,
Speaker 1: So there you go. If you've ever heard of five
Speaker 1: alarm fire and wondered where it came from, essentially comes
Speaker 1: from the This is the idea of multiple alarms triggered
Speaker 1: for a single fire. This one was a doozy. There
Speaker 1: were other boxes, of course, that were involved, Box forty
Speaker 1: eight and Box one three, which for some reason we're
Speaker 1: near box fifty two. The numbering system in Boston, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: was mostly based on chronology, meaning that if you had
Speaker 1: started off with forty or forty one boxes, and then
Speaker 1: you add in one part of the city versus another,
Speaker 1: it makes about as much sense as the house numbering
Speaker 1: system in certain parts of Atlanta, where you think, oh,
Speaker 1: well thirty will be Wait now I'm in the what happened?
Speaker 1: Now it's going backwards. What happened? All these streets are
Speaker 1: named peach trees. That also does not help. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: at least three boxes, probably more, we're involved in signaling
Speaker 1: alarms to the central operator. And so pretty soon by
Speaker 1: every single fire station in Boston had been alerted to
Speaker 1: this fire and to where the where it was coming from.
Speaker 1: Um help came in for them from all around Boston,
Speaker 1: as as far away as a New Haven, Connecticut, and Manchester, Manchester,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. Yeah, it's kind of crazy how far away
Speaker 1: they were. There were firefighters who were putting equipment on railroads,
Speaker 1: on railroads, on trains which were in turn on railroads,
Speaker 1: and shipping them down to Boston in response to this fire.
Speaker 1: Because you know, when you're talking about a fire of
Speaker 1: this magnitude, and you're talking about the technology of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. It's not like they're going to necessarily be
Speaker 1: able to get under control in a matter of hours.
Speaker 1: The Great Fire of London which happened back in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, that took three days to get to put out,
Speaker 1: So you know that these fires could last a really
Speaker 1: long time. Now, despite this amazing fire alert system, there
Speaker 1: were still huge problems in fighting this fire, which had
Speaker 1: nothing that. The problems had nothing to do with the system.
Speaker 1: The system worked just as it was intended to the
Speaker 1: alarm system, right. Um, the hoses, the fire hoses that time.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately we're not standardized. So with the hydrants, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: fire hydrants weren't standardized. Neither with the hoses, which meant
Speaker 1: that some hoses would not fit some hydrants. That's a problem. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's see that there was a there was a terrible
Speaker 1: outbreak of equal distemper a a strangles horse horse flu,
Speaker 1: which is a bacterial infection caused by by a strain
Speaker 1: of strap. So this is an extremely virulent, fast acting
Speaker 1: virus that is frequently fatal, I believe. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: even if it didn't kill a horse. The horse was
Speaker 1: essentially out of commission. Now this again and had to
Speaker 1: be quarantined. So this is before automotives. This is when
Speaker 1: you know, you your fire engines were horse drawn, So
Speaker 1: now there aren't any horses at this time. That means
Speaker 1: that they had to be man and drawn. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd hook up a team of men to your fire
Speaker 1: engine and have them tug it to wherever it was
Speaker 1: that needed to go. So you had hydrants and hoses
Speaker 1: that didn't necessarily fit each other. There was also a
Speaker 1: water pressure problem in that particular district. This was in
Speaker 1: a commercial district of Boston, so lots of warehouses and factories.
Speaker 1: Not very many homes in this part of Boston, but
Speaker 1: lots of commercial buildings. And in fact, the fire chief
Speaker 1: of Boston had been telling the city for a couple
Speaker 1: of years that they really needed to address the problem
Speaker 1: of water pressure, but no one had really taken any
Speaker 1: efforts to do it, mostly because you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: the accusations are all about how everything was very political
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to take attention away from more
Speaker 1: political matters to deal with this very practical problem. However,
Speaker 1: because the water pressure was low, it wasn't sufficient to
Speaker 1: get water to the higher levels of some of these warehouses.
Speaker 1: And because we're talking about warehouses that were some were
Speaker 1: four or five stories tall, they were taller than most
Speaker 1: fire ladders were. So firefighters couldn't get to where the
Speaker 1: flames actually were, either with water or with ladders, and
Speaker 1: it was really a problem. It meant that the fire
Speaker 1: just continued to spread. So that led some people to
Speaker 1: come up with a brilliant plan of a way of
Speaker 1: of of destroying the links between buildings so the fire
Speaker 1: could no longer spread further outward that was blowing them up.
Speaker 1: Yet they blowed them up real good with gunpowder. Now again,
Speaker 1: the fire chief initially was very much against this because frankly,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who wanted to use this
Speaker 1: were not trained in the use of gunpowder. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, if you are not trained in explosives,
Speaker 1: you have a very strong possibility of blowing yourself up
Speaker 1: along with whatever it is you're planning to destroy. And
Speaker 1: in fact that there were many injuries reported as a
Speaker 1: as a result of some of the explosions. But it
Speaker 1: was an attempt to create what are called fire breaks.
Speaker 1: These are those those breaks between buildings so that the
Speaker 1: fire can cannot jump from one building to the next.
Speaker 1: Depending upon the report you read, this was fairly successful
Speaker 1: and it helped keep the fire under control. Other reports
Speaker 1: say that it didn't you know that that it didn't
Speaker 1: have a really noticeable effect on actually fighting the fire,
Speaker 1: but it certainly made it more complicated. The fire chief
Speaker 1: was overruled by the city government that said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's fine for them to use this. He was not
Speaker 1: entirely happy. The fire chief, by the way, his name
Speaker 1: is was John Damrell. He was pretty much a hero
Speaker 1: during this whole process. He was coordinating everything. However, because
Speaker 1: the devastation was so vast. There were seven seventy six
Speaker 1: buildings destroyed around that number anyway again that I see
Speaker 1: seven hundred depending upon the report, uh and and around
Speaker 1: seventy three million dollars and damages at that time. Although
Speaker 1: um only and I mean, I mean, you know, any
Speaker 1: any deaths are tragic, but they're only Thirteen people died
Speaker 1: in the fire, um, including two members of the Boston
Speaker 1: Fire Department. Ye. Most of the buildings were in the
Speaker 1: commercial district, like we said, so they weren't residents, and
Speaker 1: so if it had been in a residential area, obviously
Speaker 1: those numbers would be different. So that considering the of
Speaker 1: a staying nature of this fire, that was that was
Speaker 1: It's hard to call it a silver lining, but it
Speaker 1: could have been worked. So Fire Chief John Damrell had
Speaker 1: warned the city he had tried to work against some
Speaker 1: of the plans of using gunpowder. He coordinated the efforts.
Speaker 1: How was he rewarded well? He went on to organize
Speaker 1: the National Association of Fire Chiefs. But eighteen seventy two
Speaker 1: was when the fire broke out, and by eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: four he had been replaced as fire chief of Boston. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: fire chief, are doing a great job and telling us
Speaker 1: all the things that we needed to hear because it
Speaker 1: wasn't political. We're gonna put all the blame on you
Speaker 1: for the fact that this fire was bigger than what
Speaker 1: it should have been. Instead of crediting you, we're gonna
Speaker 1: put the blame on you and you lose your job.
Speaker 1: He would actually go on to become the building inspector
Speaker 1: for Boston. Like instead of becoming better, he actually took
Speaker 1: on a different role and made sure that building codes
Speaker 1: and fire codes were enforceable by law. Right right. He
Speaker 1: he went at the system in a different way and said,
Speaker 1: if you're not going to listen to me this way,
Speaker 1: then I can do it this way. I can at
Speaker 1: least make this enforceable to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Speaker 1: So because of the work he did and the work
Speaker 1: of other people who who followed him, they the building
Speaker 1: codes for Boston changed, the materials used in construction, changed
Speaker 1: the the actual uh the way things were constructed so
Speaker 1: that they weren't built necessarily so close together. That changed
Speaker 1: another interesting point early on with this whole fire system.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you could call it ironic that the the central
Speaker 1: system we had talked about, the central office where everything
Speaker 1: came through, was actually originally housed in an extremely flammable building.
Speaker 1: Isn't a building that was crammed up against other buildings
Speaker 1: and could have easily caught on fire, but eventually was
Speaker 1: moved to a different location and in fact is now
Speaker 1: part of the Parks department. It's still operational. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is still a working fire safety department, and it
Speaker 1: it be cause it's in the parks. That means no
Speaker 1: one else can build there. So it's the closest building
Speaker 1: is two fifty feet away from this and that is
Speaker 1: regulated in in the laws forever. Yea, So there's not
Speaker 1: it's made out of flame retardet material and it's not
Speaker 1: close to any other buildings. So now at least the
Speaker 1: fire alert system on fire, which would be you know interesting,
Speaker 1: like to get an alert like be a be a
Speaker 1: firefighter and you get an alert there's a fire? Where
Speaker 1: is it in the fire station? That bites Let's go
Speaker 1: all right, so now we get back over to some
Speaker 1: more development developments in this system. Now remember, yeah, the tech,
Speaker 1: the basic principles remain the same, but the interface changes.
Speaker 1: And another change happened in one UH that was the
Speaker 1: first key less alarm box, where people said, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe something that could help make alarm boxes more effective,
Speaker 1: as if we didn't have to worry about where the
Speaker 1: key is when we need to signal the alarm. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, this does obviously open up the possibility for
Speaker 1: pranks or mistaken UH calls. There might be and you know,
Speaker 1: the occasional alarm where someone legitimately thought something was on
Speaker 1: fire and it turns out it's not. So it's not
Speaker 1: like I don't want to suggest that only hooligans were
Speaker 1: going around pulling fire alarms, but also they changed the
Speaker 1: actual handle. They went to the T handle approach, which
Speaker 1: shaped like the letter T, which is why it's called that.
Speaker 1: So you've probably seen ones like this. It's a little
Speaker 1: lever and you pull it down and that's what activates it.
Speaker 1: But otherwise it did the exact same thing as the
Speaker 1: previous generations. Um. The first one that had this kind
Speaker 1: of UH alarm system was box number forty two, which
Speaker 1: is at the intersection of Tremont and Winter Streets. And
Speaker 1: by the way, when I started mispronouncing Boston streets, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that both of us have been doing a
Speaker 1: whole lot of that. I've only been to Boston once,
Speaker 1: and I did not go to that many streets. I
Speaker 1: went to an aquarium in the Science Museum, both of
Speaker 1: which were lovely. On May two of eight eight one,
Speaker 1: the city government ordered that all fire alarm boxes were
Speaker 1: to be painted red instead of black, which probably made
Speaker 1: it a lot easier to find them at night in
Speaker 1: the dark. Yeah, when you're when you're told at night
Speaker 1: that the nearest alarm boxes a block away and it's
Speaker 1: it's painted black, you might start to consider certain phrases
Speaker 1: in your mind to describe the decision to paint said
Speaker 1: boxes black in the first place. They would later be
Speaker 1: painted green and are now back to red again as
Speaker 1: of this current date. Oh, I didn't even know they
Speaker 1: had changed to green. Yeah, that's why I don't think
Speaker 1: it was for another another while. UM And and at
Speaker 1: this point in time, systems, these UM, these game Well
Speaker 1: systems were in place in a hundred and three cities. UH.
Speaker 1: In eight two, they decided to install another new technology
Speaker 1: as part of the central office. This one called the telemophone.
Speaker 1: Yes ahoihoi so telephone was ordered to be installed at
Speaker 1: the central Office in the fire alarm headquarters, which was
Speaker 1: different than the central office and most firehouses or fire stations.
Speaker 1: But it would take about three years before they actually
Speaker 1: managed to outfit all of the system with these new
Speaker 1: fangled telephones. UM. During during that decade from from about
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, that the number of telegraph fire alarm
Speaker 1: systems jumped from about a hundred to about seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty across the country. About five of those game well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, about five hundred of those game well and
Speaker 1: in another two hundred something something something. UM rival companies
Speaker 1: that were starting to open up clearly game. Well was
Speaker 1: ahead of the game. One might say, well ahead of
Speaker 1: the game. Goodness, Lauren wouldn't, but I would. I would
Speaker 1: not at all. That's when the first underground fire alarm
Speaker 1: cable was installed. Now, all previous cables, of course, were
Speaker 1: strung out over head. They were you know, across rooftops.
Speaker 1: They had their own glass insulators that held them. This
Speaker 1: one was a cable that would go under the ground.
Speaker 1: The first box connected to the underground cable was box
Speaker 1: number fifty four on Beach Street in eighteen nine, and
Speaker 1: a year later, several alarm boxes were equipped with red
Speaker 1: electric lamp indicators. So now you have the audible alarm
Speaker 1: as well as the red light that could light up
Speaker 1: when an alarm box was triggered. By seven, all of
Speaker 1: the alarm boxes in Boston were equipped with keyless doors.
Speaker 1: So that finally rolled out after you know, more than
Speaker 1: a decade, and then uh in nt uh the current
Speaker 1: Fire Alarm Office of Boston opens. Now you remember we
Speaker 1: said that it moved from when we were talking about
Speaker 1: it's in Kaway Park and um, it's it's got that
Speaker 1: good cushi zone around it, yep, and it's uh. It
Speaker 1: took all of two minutes when it officially opened before
Speaker 1: the first alarm came in. So eight a m. It opens,
Speaker 1: eight oh two, they get their first alarm. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: and it was from box which was located at Westland Avenue.
Speaker 1: Probably still is probably doubt that Boston has moved around
Speaker 1: that much. I have not noticed it doing so. They
Speaker 1: could have renamed the street that's sometimes um and it's
Speaker 1: and it's still as of Boston was still the only
Speaker 1: city with a telegraph alarm system that made this paper record. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is incredible because that paper record is important, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a historical document all on its own.
Speaker 1: And again, by looking at that record over lengths of time,
Speaker 1: you could see if there were parts of the city
Speaker 1: that perhaps needed to be looked at more closely because
Speaker 1: of the frequency of fires that are breaking out. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting to me that that they were
Speaker 1: the only ones really doing it at that point. It's
Speaker 1: it's a vague possibility that that um game well exaggerated
Speaker 1: that figure for the purpose. I believe the document I
Speaker 1: read it in was a pamphlet had been that's fair. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, because I've got a huge
Speaker 1: jump in time now from nine to three. Do you
Speaker 1: have anything you want to fill in between those years?
Speaker 1: I do not. It was it was a boring time
Speaker 1: for alarm telegraph systems, right, I mean, we had a
Speaker 1: couple of world wars and a depression in there. But
Speaker 1: other than that, and maybe you know, some occasional fires,
Speaker 1: but beyond that, I I guess we should mention that
Speaker 1: you know that this was when you know, during that time,
Speaker 1: we went from the what seven and fifty something to
Speaker 1: over two boxes box systems across the country. And also
Speaker 1: by by the time you get to three, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of cities that had installed the telegraph systems
Speaker 1: that were now decommissioning them. But we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that towards the end, because there's some interesting facts and
Speaker 1: figures about that. Okay, So nineteen eighty three, the Boston
Speaker 1: Fire Commissioner George Paul announced plans to phase out this
Speaker 1: alarm system, which was over a century old almost it's
Speaker 1: like a hund and thirty one years old at this point. Uh,
Speaker 1: he had he said that he wanted to phase it
Speaker 1: out over the following seven years, so it would have
Speaker 1: concluded in nineteen Now, why would he want to get
Speaker 1: rid of a system that had been in working order
Speaker 1: for more than a century. Out of the working order
Speaker 1: was not hugely working. There were a lot of problems. Yeah.
Speaker 1: First of all, he said that there were that the
Speaker 1: vast majority of alarms that were coming in through this
Speaker 1: system were false alarms. Whether those were pranks or mistakes
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. He was saying that over of all
Speaker 1: alarms received through the system were false and and that furthermore,
Speaker 1: each false alarm was costing U the city like seven
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. Yeah, which meant that it costs the taxpayers
Speaker 1: seven hundred bucks per false alarm. And uh, and that's
Speaker 1: because you figure out the cost of the firefighters, the
Speaker 1: fuel needed for the fire engine, all the equipment, and
Speaker 1: then just the time wasted. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: a figure that he had he had cited in his
Speaker 1: decision to phase this out. And he said that only
Speaker 1: two point four percent of all structural fires were reported
Speaker 1: through the use of these boxes. So not only are
Speaker 1: most of the reports coming in false the ones that
Speaker 1: are actual fires, the only two point four percent were
Speaker 1: coming in through boxes in the first place. Otherwise they
Speaker 1: were getting them through other means, whether it was radio, telephone, whatever,
Speaker 1: but they were getting their information in other ways. So
Speaker 1: he was saying that it's an obsolete system that is
Speaker 1: giving us more false alarms than than active ones. We
Speaker 1: should get rid of it now. Despite this, the system
Speaker 1: stays in place. So even though he cites this plan
Speaker 1: and he gives his reasons and they seem like pretty
Speaker 1: solid ones, nothing happens. I don't know the reason for that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a lot of resistance.
Speaker 1: Bostonians can sometimes be considered a somewhat stubborn lot, perhaps
Speaker 1: some kind of a historical society lobby. Um. Boston is
Speaker 1: also a very very big city for for historical preservation. Yep, yep, um.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just full of beans. It is Beantown, face it, alright.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the system doesn't go anywhere. It stays in place.
Speaker 1: So Boston does something incredible. They update the system with
Speaker 1: electronic decoding terminals, and at that time they are about
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred or so far alarm boxes on streets and
Speaker 1: another one thousand in public and private buildings. There are
Speaker 1: more now, but or so total across the city. They
Speaker 1: maintain the fact that it is um independent of telephone
Speaker 1: and grid electric lines, right, meaning that if the telephone
Speaker 1: system fails, if the electric system fails, this system will
Speaker 1: still work. That's actually one of, probably one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why it stayed in place, because even though you
Speaker 1: could argue that you are getting more false alarms than
Speaker 1: real ones, and that you are getting most of your
Speaker 1: information through other means, anyway, this was a rely a
Speaker 1: bowl method of reporting a fire that was completely independent
Speaker 1: of other systems, So even if other systems failed, you
Speaker 1: could still rely on this. I'm guessing that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it remained active even after the fire
Speaker 1: commissioner had planned on phasing it out. Now UM around
Speaker 1: around this time, ish, I I know definitely. As of
Speaker 1: two thousand three, UM, game Well had been acquired by
Speaker 1: a company called Honeywell International UM and no longer makes
Speaker 1: new telegraph systems. However, they do still continue to support
Speaker 1: the existing ones, right. Yeah, that warranty was serious business.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, way better than my TV. Yes. So,
Speaker 1: Honeywell now is the parent company, the owner of the
Speaker 1: game Well company. UM and in early this year, we're
Speaker 1: recording this in for those of you in the future
Speaker 1: who are listening back on this episode. Hi, where's my
Speaker 1: jet pack? But in the Boston government actually opened up
Speaker 1: a forum of dialogue and said, Hey, Bostonians, how would
Speaker 1: you update our fire alarm system? What would you do
Speaker 1: to bring it into the twenty first century? What capabilities
Speaker 1: should it have, what what technology should it be built upon.
Speaker 1: So now we're talking about finally perhaps switching this from
Speaker 1: the telegraph system it's been based on since eighteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: So we might actually see a new fire alarm system
Speaker 1: rolled out in Boston over the next few years that
Speaker 1: will be similar perhaps to what is exists now, but
Speaker 1: built on a completely different technology. I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if it's still had its own independent power system so
Speaker 1: that it could maintain, because I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the most important parts. Sure. Sure, and and a lot
Speaker 1: of towns are taking down their their telegraph systems these
Speaker 1: days in favor of radio signal alarm systems. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: And and like we said, those those benefits are really
Speaker 1: just that, you know, if if there's an earthquake and
Speaker 1: it brings telephone and power down, or um, if there's
Speaker 1: some kind of computer glitch that brings down a nine
Speaker 1: one one system. UM. Both of these things are things
Speaker 1: that have happened and UH in earthquake in San Francisco
Speaker 1: two thousand four glitch in the New York City UH system,
Speaker 1: the boxes can still operate and can still get messages
Speaker 1: that will save lives and property. We've even seen, you know,
Speaker 1: during big catastrophes or even just large events where cellular
Speaker 1: networks get completely overwhelmed with traffic and you can't get
Speaker 1: a call in or out of them. This would still
Speaker 1: be a system that would work under that, Because, I mean,
Speaker 1: more and more people are moving away from landlines. But
Speaker 1: just because you have a cellular phone doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you can always depend upon it. There are gonna be
Speaker 1: times where systems are gonna get overwhelmed. So having an
Speaker 1: independent system that doesn't need to tie into any of
Speaker 1: those things has a lot of appeal. Sure, the upkeep
Speaker 1: on them is very expensive. Those Sacramento is hope and
Speaker 1: hoping that dismantling its system is going to save the
Speaker 1: city UM five thousand dollars per year UM. And upkeep
Speaker 1: so so cheap to install, expensive to maintain. I see
Speaker 1: how they get you. You know that the wires are
Speaker 1: susceptible to wear, and unlike other utility systems that a
Speaker 1: city would buy into it's it's a unitasker. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not like this can be used for anything else.
Speaker 1: Brown would hate it. Yes, thank you to Alton Brown
Speaker 1: for totally what I was thinking of. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of cities that are turning those old boxes
Speaker 1: into art. They make it into like an art exhibit.
Speaker 1: So you know, they're not getting rid of the infrastructure
Speaker 1: in the sense of like taking down the boxes. They're
Speaker 1: letting it not be updated anymore. It's just becoming something
Speaker 1: that's meant for. Yeah, speaking of historical I wanted in
Speaker 1: this kind of talking about the Boston Fire Museum. Uh.
Speaker 1: The website, by the way, was very helpful putting together
Speaker 1: a lot of the information for this podcast, so I
Speaker 1: recommend looking at But according to the website, the Austin
Speaker 1: Fire Museum has some of the old equipment from the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two system on display, including a box transmitter
Speaker 1: which was designed to re transmit information from alarm boxes
Speaker 1: to fire stations, and it's tied into the tapper circuit
Speaker 1: of the Boston fire alarm system. But whenever anything goes off,
Speaker 1: it rings the bell. It rings the bell and types
Speaker 1: out the tape so you can actually see if you
Speaker 1: can read the Morse code. You'll see which box number
Speaker 1: triggered that alarm, so you if you are there when
Speaker 1: the alarm is triggered, it'll go off and you'll be
Speaker 1: able to see it in action. I don't recommend that
Speaker 1: you orchestrate this so that you can actually see it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I hope that if you do go to the museum
Speaker 1: that it remains inactive, because that means there's not a
Speaker 1: fire hopefully, but but still kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of neat that it's tied. It's
Speaker 1: actively tied into the system. Now, nothing is dependent upon
Speaker 1: this particular piece of technology. It's just it's just tapped into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of anything, like, wow, it still works,
Speaker 1: and you think that either means someone's being naughty or
Speaker 1: someone is on fire. I hope everyone's okay, exactly, So
Speaker 1: it's that weird moment of wow. Oh but anyway, I
Speaker 1: thought it was really cool. So anyway that I except
Speaker 1: this discussion. I love this topic. I love taking stuff
Speaker 1: that has this historic aspect to it, something that I
Speaker 1: didn't really know very much about before we started researching it.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was all new information for me, so
Speaker 1: and of course, I love learning things. That was really exciting. Guys,
Speaker 1: if there's anything along these lines, something that is historical
Speaker 1: and technological, keep in mind the Hard Technology podcast that
Speaker 1: you would like to hear more about something that you've
Speaker 1: always heard about and you thought, how did that work
Speaker 1: and what was it successful? Let us know, says an
Speaker 1: email tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, just
Speaker 1: like our listener did Hey, did you ever figure out
Speaker 1: who it was? Yes? That was listener Ben via Twitter. Ben,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for the suggestion. I know that this
Speaker 1: is a little bit different from let you ask, but
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed it, so be like then contact us.
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