Fire in Bean Town

at different fire prevention type technologies. Well, we had gotten a reader request, a listener request, because this is an audio podcast and I and I do not have the request open in front of me, so I apologize to the nice human person who sent this in. UM, someone requested that we do uh episode about fire alarms, And in initial research, I there's so much that that is commercial out there that's immediately available and uh, and we

were kind of running up to a deadline. But I realized that, um, that the original fire alarm system a telegraph system in Boston in the eighteen hundreds, eighteen fifty. Fascinating. Yeah, this this turned out to be an amazing topic. So we decided to tackle this system that was installed in eighteen fifty two. We're not there yet, by the way, not at all. We're gonna we're gonna work our way up to eighteen fifty two. But it was installed in

eighteen fifty two and it's still working today. Now. We'll address that in greater detail as the episode goes on. So, but it's still really kind of remarkable to think of this, this system that's over a hundred fifty years old still running. So let's talk about what necessitated it now. Really to think about it is to talk about the rise of the construction of cities, which often ended up being rapid and unplanned and made a material that we will generously

called flammable. Right there, there wasn't so many steel beams and concrete being used, and even say even even brick houses would have wooden window frames or door frames or flooring or whatever, and if a fire got hot enough, it could actually cause those materials to burst into flame, even if they didn't have direct contact with the flames themselves. It would create what is really called a firestorm, where the fire gets so hot it starts to be able

to it just sort of balloons out of control. And uh, an early example of this one that was absolutely devastating. We have to look back all the way to sixteen sixty six the Great Fire of London. Now, this affected the city of London, which is a square mile. That's tiny compared to metropolitan London, right, but this fire devastated that part of London and stretched a little bit beyond those borders, depending upon you know which side you're talking about,

destroying more than ten thousand houses in the process. And it's it was an enormously devastating fire. And so that was an example of something that really showed that there was a need now that we had these cities that were really densely populated with lots and lots of houses that are built incredibly close together, some of them so close that even in an alleyway, the the upper stories

would be in contact with each other. So you might have enough room at the at the ground level to walk through, but if you were to look up, you wouldn't see sky. Wow, that's kind of terrifying. Yeah, it is a little creepy, you know. It's almost like every alleyway is really just becomes a tunnel because these these upper stories of these buildings are Yeah, so before in Boston,

here's how a typical fire would be reported. Uh so, so someone would be assigned the task in in a particular neighbor hood or area of town that if if fire broke out, they would um go run to the nearest church and and ring the church bells. And you had people also who would carry wooden rattles and rattle them or just holler. Yeah, so Boston ended up having this this real problem. I mean they called it hallooing a fire because really you're just kind of hooting and

hollering trying to get people's attention. But that's not terribly precise. In fact, it could be very confusing. If anyone has ever been in a large city and heard a noise, it could be really hard to detect where that noise is coming from, let alone a precise location. It's hard just to even figure out the general direction sometimes just

the way sound travels and bounces around. Sure, and the speed of response is so important in these kind of things, especially back in in those days, when containing a fire would absolutely I mean not that that's not true these days, but yeah, it could spread so quickly. I mean they you know, every the basic building materials that were a lot of these buildings were made of were very flammable. There wasn't a lot of flame retardant type material being mixed in at that time, so you had a serious

need to have a quick response. And unfortunately what was happening was that fire engines would leave the fire station with no way of knowing where the actual fire was, and so they essentially go off in all different directions trying to find the fire. It was really only if a fire had gotten so huge as you could see it, yeah, and by then getting it under control is even more difficult.

So at the time you would have a fire foreman who would actually shout directions through a trumpet, like a speaking trumpet, all right, like a cheerleaders, Yeah, megaphone, any other than cheerleaders, that's right. Uh. And so one of the awards that would be given away to firefighters for distinguished service was a silver trumpet that was kind of saying, in the execution of your duty, you have done amazing service. And keep in mind that a lot of these firefighters

were volunteer firefighters. This was not the necessarily, not in Boston anyway. It's not necessarily the era of private firefighting companies, which were also a thing. To the point where there were companies that would compete with one another or turn away service based on Yeah, they'd show up and to be like, we'll put out that fire, but first you gotta pay us. Not the most altruistic of firefighting efforts. But in this case we're talking about citizens of volunteers. Really,

but that was before eighty five. Now, in eighteen forty four, a certain inventor created something that would change the world. Actually, let me take this back just a tiny bit, because you were you were about to talk about Samuel Morris. I am, but you you you have something to to interject. I do have something to interject. The thing is that that Samuel Morris was not the inventor of the telegraph.

He wasn't even the sole inventor of Morse code. UM. The first known telegraph line was erected in eighteen thirty seven by Charles Whitstone and William Cook in the UK. UM this was a line between Euston and Camden Town

on the London and Burningham Railway. And uh it was this complex five line, five needles system that would point to different letters on a grid by reversing the direction of the current flowing through these five wires and um it was it was pretty unwieldy, those those you know, having five wires per terminal was really expensive and really complex,

especially for eighteen thirty seven. But these those two gentlemen had been kind of independently working through the concepts that Michael Fairday were talking was talking about and in creating this telegraph technology. Samuel Morse was the first one to complete a line here in the States. That line opened up between d C and Baltimore in um. The first message he sent in his early version of Morse code was what hath god wrocked? Yeah? And um, yeah, that

that's a famous message. That boy little apocalyptic there in a way. But yeah, so you might be wondering, how do does this system actually work? And it's it's pretty cool. So uh so we you know what we've talked about circuits quite a bit on this podcast. But a circuit,

you know, that's essentially a pathway that electricity can take. Now, if you have what is called an open circuit, that means that electricity can't pass all the way through the circuit, there's something there's a gap there, so it can no longer travel and continue its path. A closed circuit means that it's completely closed and yeah, and an electricity can

go all the way through the pathway. So if you were to have an open circuit, a telegraph line that's an open circuit, and you had a switch, in this case a telegraph key that when you press the SWI which it closes the circuit so that electricity can flow through. On the other end of that circuit is a receiving station that when it receives this an electro magnet activates because we know, you know, when you have electricity going through an electromagnet, it creates a magnetic force. The magnetic

force pulls on one end of a lever. The other end of the lever is attached to a pen that comes into contact with a rolling piece of paper, and so as you hold down the key, the pen stays in contact with the paper because electricity is flowing through and it's activated that electro magnetic coil. When you let go of the key, electricity stops flowing the magnetic coil let's go, and the pen the lever drops, lifting the pen off the paper or removing the paper from the pen.

It all depends on the actual implementation of this technology because there were different models of telegraph machines. So by doing a series of taps, you can create dots and dashes on the paper as the pen moves on and off of it. That and earn would be interpreted as Morse code, So you would have a certain series of dots and dashes representing each letter of the alphabet. Also numbers, that kind of thing. Uh. So that was your your

basic telegraph station. You had the sending and the receiving and then you might have another circuit that is on the receiving end where they can send messages back right, and and that specific battery switch electromagnet rig was Morse's invention. There we go, and that would become really important in what we're about to discuss the idea of using this in a way beyond sending a message and making it an actual alert system. So that comes up to eighteen

forty four. Morse has has completed this and demonstrated it and it's shown to be an effective means of communication. That was, yeah, it was. It was really popular in in the news and you know, ever, it was what everyone was talking about in scientific circles because finally you could get news from from one city to another city in right faster than any other means of transportation at that time. So eighteen forty five, a year after Morse has really has really broken this open in the US,

a mandate. Dr William F. Channing, a native of Boston and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and of Harvard with a medical degree, published an article in the Boston Daily Advertiser, and it was all about creating a telegraph based fire alarm system for Boston. It was it was an article that was saying, hey, this dude, Morse

has this pretty cool thing. We can use that thing. Yeah, And and the problems that we have right now in Boston mainly that by the time an alarm gets to a fire station, it's almost too late, and the fire

station doesn't even really know where the fire is. This solves both of those problems because the communication is immediate, and because of the way we can design this, it can be precise so that every single alarm station that we erect that's part of the system will have its own unique identifier, so that way we know where the fire is, not just that it's happened, but where it is. And that way we have much faster response time. Yeah. So he he was recommending not only the the application

of this technology, but an organization system built around it. Yeah. He had an entire infrastructure that he proposed, and this is what eventually gets put in place in Boston more or less. I mean, it's almost exactly what he had proposed, although it did have to go through some refining and tweaking because this was a brand new system. No one had tried it before. And of course, as anyone who has worked with any type of technology knows, bugs will

pop up. As you know, you'll you'll think, oh, well, based upon electronic principles, that should work perfectly, perfectly, and I'm gonna figure this. Oh, this switch was turned in open form, it should be closed. But so so he joined up with an electrical engineer, Um, Moses chief Farmer. Yeah, yeah, Moses chief Farmer. Interesting guy. He had worked in a civil engineers office for a while. He was also a school principal for a while. Uh, and he had an

affinity for machines. In fact, the first machine he had built that I could find anyway. He may have worked on other ones before this, but he created a machine

that could print paper window shades. Uh. And then he when Morse really got the telegraph going, he became interested in telegraph machines, began to work on them, and eventually was put in charge of the telegraph line between Boston and Newberryport, Massachusetts in eighteen forty eight, and actually got to the point where he had sort of a managerial position. He would help open new telegraph offices in the area and make sure that the connections were there and every

thing along those lines. He and Dr Channing kind of put their heads together and came up with this this UH proposal. And now in eighteen forty eight, Farmer actually invented an electric striking apparatus for the fire Alarm service because part of this overall infrastructure they were talking about was not just something that would notify the fire stations that there was a fire, but also have an alarm system to alert the citizens that a fire was in

the area. Yeah. Yeah, something that would simultaneously alert UM all the other like like you know, from a grand central station, it would alert all of the stations along with the citizenship, right exactly. So this way, if you've ever lived in a place that has UH an orchestrated alarm system, something like in here in Atlanta, we talked about tornado alarms that if you hear the tornado sirens go off, you know there's a tornado in the area. Uh. The this is sort of a similar thing. The bells

would ring uh to alert citizens. And ideally, in the actual proposal, they had talked about connecting all the church bells in Boston to this system, so that they would all ring simultaneously and simultaneously in a pattern that would identify the location of the fire. So, in other words, once you knew what the different patterns were, you would know where the fire was no matter where you were in the city of Boston, by the sound of the

bells ringing. As it turns out, getting all the bells in the city to ring simultaneously is somewhat of a non trivial problem. That's complex, yeah, trying to get I mean, you're talking about physical circuits here. These are physical wires, like over over the air wires. I mean, these are wires that are above ground, uh, you know, held up on rooftops of houses, supported by glass insulators. You know.

They and in fact, there's actually some discrepancy about whether or not the original wires were all yeah, yeah, I mean because at the time the the insulation um insulation technology was was glass tar pitch. Yeah, there are no plastics there were there were no plastics. UM. They started getting into UM two ceramics and stuff like that a little bit later, but that wouldn't be for another couple

of decades, I don't think now. And Channing's writing he refers to it as being insulated, and then other writings referred to them being not insulated. So here's the thing, because we're talking about historical documents and historical uh events, and this is a time where this is before the digital age. Clearly we're talking to eighteen fifties. The records are UH sparse, and not all of them are not

all of them agree with one another. We we we depend on correspondence and patents and stuff like that, Saper articles. I have a whole new respect for Holly and Tracy over at us plug. We need to we need to have a little bell sound every time we plug one of our our sister podcasts UM. But they do amazing work. And yeah, when this really opens up your eyes to

how complex it becomes. So we've got Farmer and we've got Channing working on this proposed system, and it wasn't until eighteen fifty one that they actually presented their proposal to the city, the Boston City government, and they argued that this would be a way that would save a lot some money in the long run, because fires were still in a big issue, big fear they happened. I mean, it was a scary thing that could completely devastate an

entire city, or at least districts of a city. There are multiple districts within the city of Boston, um, and actually their proposal incorporated that so that each district had its own set of boxes. And in fact, as we'll talk about the way that boxes were encoded, it would tell the operator first which district was being affected, and then tell the operator which box was the one that

had been activated. So they send this proposal to the Boston City Government in eighteen fifty one, and the government approves it and work begins on the system on September seven, eight fifty one. Originally, depending upon whom you ask, because there are discrepancies, Uh, this system had three box circuits, three bell circuits, forty alarm boxes some into Yeah, it all depends. Like there's one source that was very definitively saying no, there were forty one boxes, and another one

that says no, there were thirty nine. I'm going with forty forty ish boxes uh sixteen to nineteen alarm bills. And the one central office, yes, one central office which was this was the office through which all communication would pass. So the idea being that when someone would would activate one of these alarm boxes, the message would come to this central office that the operator the central office could

then pass communication to the nearest fire stations. Originally it was not recorded on paper, um, the way that we were talking about earlier. Originally there it was just manned

twenty four hours a day. Right. Channing had said that a paper recording would be valuable because, for one thing, it would help keep track of all the different times that the alarm was signaled, because even in the early days, there was worry that prankish people something would be missed, or that you know, um, eventually there would be finger pointing that would happen due to some terrible something or another, or someone just ends up having a hankering for triggering

alarms when there are no fires at all. It was an idea of this way we keep a record of it. It becomes more of an official thing it uh, you know, that'll cut down on misuse of the system. Was really that was the main focus, but also just to keep an eye on different parts of the city, saying, well, this one part of the city gets uh, there are more alarmed trip there than anywhere else. That would bring were and Boston would have the first the first paper

recorder system for one of these telegraph fire alarms. But but that was a few years. Yeah, but that was that was what Channing had hoped to do at the very beginning, but it would be a few years before that happens. So what happens is that the the operator sees it, they send out the alert to the to the uh the respective fire stations, there might be more than one, to say this alarm box was triggered, you need to go there, and then the firefighters would there.

There's be someone at the fire fire station who would be manning the receiving station to get that message, who would then pull the bell to to alert the firefighters. Let's go and give them the message of this is where you need to go. This is the alarm box that was triggered. Go to that location and and fight the fire. So, uh, it was an ingenious system. He had proposed that the power would come from two sources outside the facility, so that if one source failed, the

other one would continue. And later they were able to have a gasoline power generator as well, so that way, even if the entire city lost power, the system would still remain viable. So telephone lines go down, electric power lines go down. This system, yeah, so it's still working. That was and you know, it's one of the the things that really said apart from a lot of other systems that people were proposing at the time. So there

were about forty miles of wire in this original system. Actually, depending upon the source, it gets up to about forty eight miles. It was technically twenty four miles. But they made redundant circuits. So that was another really brilliant thing about the system. Exactly. Yeah, the redundancy is so important because you're talking about fire. I mean, this is a dangerous and destructive force and above ground cables, yeah, exactly.

And Boston has been known from time to time to have snow and ice storms very occasionally, so it gets wicked cold in Boston and so sometimes these these lines can break and so by creating redundancy, it made the made the system more robust. Uh. So there are two sets of these lines forty miles or so forty eight miles of wire, and the actual call boxes or alarm boxes were locked. They had a lock on them. They

were painted black at first. Right until about the eighteen seventies, only trusted people in the area were given keys and um, and there were instructions on the little key pop. I've seen a couple of museum museum pieces and uh. When eventually the system got too big to handle and they realized they were doing everyone a disservice by keeping these locked and making someone who wanted to report a fire go find one of these people who held a key. Right.

Like you know, say someone is on vacation out of town. That makes it a little more difficult. Well, when they get back, we can tell them that their house burned down. Um. Yeah, so this it was locked away. But if you were to unlock the system, open up the door. Uh, inside wasn't interesting pairing. There was a hand crank and there was a telegraph key. Now, the hand crank was what

the the person was expected to use. The person, the person who had been entrusted with the key, and by turning the crank it would be the same effect as if you were sending a telegraph from a sending station to a receiving station. The crank would turn a wheel, and the wheel would have on it essentially contacts. It would it would push a little spring powered UH circuit closed and complete the circuit to the central station. So

turning the crank turns the wheel. The wheel turns around and around, and that creates this pattern of dots and dashes that's unique to that particular box. Each box has

its own patterns. That way, when the operator receives it, they can this is box forty one, which happens to be on the street of such and such and such and such, and so the first bit of the wheel would actually have the UH the the district number, so that they know generally what part of Boston it was in, and then the next part would actually have the boxes identity, and the wheel, by the way was or the crank was waited so that when you were done turning it,

it would move into its rest position, so that would be ready to give the exact right information as soon as you started turning it again. Instructions were, by the way, to to only do this once, because if you kept repeating the signal, it would clog, it could interfere with itself. Exactly. If you were to continue this, it could end up causing confusion. You wouldn't necessarily know where the beginning and

end of the message was. That could cost you valuable minutes, which is a huge thing when you're talking about fighting a fire that could go out of control, particularly in a city again that has these problems of this really dense population and flammable building materials. So the idea was that the through batteries and this backup generator and the incoming power, that the system would always be available. And assuming that at least one of the two the two circuits, Yeah,

you're you're in good ship, You're now. This is really kind of an ingenious way of making this possible for even someone who has no idea how telegraphs work. All they have to do is turn a crank once that's it. Well, they have to unlock the box first, obviously. Now, if you've got someone there at the station or at the alarm box, someone who generally speaking is with the firefighters,

who has trained in the telegraph system. They could use the actual key, the telegraph key that was also inside the box to send specific messages back to the operators. So let's say that the fire itself is around the corner from where the alarm box is, that might be valuable information for more incoming engine saying now there's you need to come up through blah blah blah street in order to get to where the fire is. That kind

of thing. So I could give more information, but that was generally meant for people who are part of this whole system, not not the average citizen. Yeah, they also did eventually, although they never managed to sink up all of the church bells in the city. Um. They didn't

stalled alarm bells in the boxes that would um. Once once the operator had sent out a signal to the relevant fire stations, some of some of the boxes alarms would sound, letting anyone else who was nearby in the area know that there's this call box down here has reported a fire, right and and the way that would work is exactly the same way really as the telegraph machine.

You had an electromagnetic coil in there that would pull back a lever that was on a spring, so the spring would create tension, and once the electromagnetics signal went away, once the electricity went out, it would release that and it would strike the lever would strike a bell, and it would do this multiple times, and you know, several times a second. So you would get that did into things, Yeah, you would. It was codd. For example, with with box forty one, it would be a bell strike four times,

a slight pause, and a bell strike one. Wow. I did not know that. I didn't come across that. That's kind of cool. So when you get up in to the thousands, you gotta count a lot because, by the way, when when it first started, obviously we're talking, you know, about forty or forty ish boxes, but eventually there would be more than two thousand of these installed throughout Boston, some of them in public and private buildings, some of

them months on actual streets. Uh. And of course the mechanism would change, as far as the interface would change. We'll get into that that interface would change, but the basic principle of what we're talking about here has remained largely unchanged when they started building it. Yeah, two, that's fair.

Fifty two was just when it was complete, limented Yeah, and even even when I say completed, there were still lots of bugs to work out, So wouldn't be until probably the mid eighteen fifties that the system was what you would call robust. Early times they were like, oh, we just found out something else that we did not anticipate when we first started building this thing. Yeah, two was the official installation date. April. So, um, when did the first alarm come in? Not even a full day

old and the alarm comes in. There's actually another story that will get to later on that's very similar to this. Yeah, April eighteen fifty two. The system is up, the systems in place, they can identify what boxes is sounding the alarm, and it did not take but a day's five PM, as it turns out, because people would take note of when the alarms came in. The first alarm was received

over the system and uh. Actually Moses Farmer would become the superintendent of the fire alarm system and uh it was shown to be effective, although again they had to

tweak it multiple times over the next few years. Meanwhile, around eighteen fifty five, that's when a man named John Nelson Gamewell, who was a postmaster and telegraph company agent from South Carolina attended a lecture that Dr Channing held about the telegraph system, and that same year, just a little bit later, a game Well ended up purchasing the regional rights for marketing the system in the Southern United States,

South and the West, I believe. Yeah, yeah, there was a well the Southern United States and the western territories. We don't really talk about them in the eighteen fifties. Uh so yeah, so that you might be noticing eighteen fifties, if you know your United States history, something major is about to happen. Uh, And that actually shakes things up

a bit. But in eighteen fifties seven, Channing and Farmer are issued a patent, and that patent is for the invention that they called improvement in electric magnetic fire alarm Telegraphs for cities. That's specific. Um. And it was interesting I read this patent, this patent they actually filed for it in eighteen fifty five and they got the patent issued. Um. It's interesting because you know the I explained the system they used where they went with what was essentially an

open circuit that would close as these wheels would turn right. Uh. They had also allowed for a version where it would be a closed circuit. So in other words, electricity is always flowing through the circuit, but when you turn the wheel, the wheel interrupts that electricity and it creates the same sort of code. It just does it using an open you know, open interruptions as opposed to closed signals. So it was they were saying, you know, you could do

this either way. Yeah, it doesn't doesn't matter which one you choose. It's going to work. You just have to be consistent. That's the only important part is being consistent. And the redundancy they stressed that as well. But the and the patent is, by the way, it's available to read if you go I use Google Patent search, it actually goes back further than a lot of the other Yeah. And if you just put in improvement and electric magnetic fire alarm telegraphs for cities and will pop right up.

It's a it's a fun read. I mean, you know, as pa, let's go. It's it's actually I would argue it's easier to understand than a lot of modern patents. A lot of modern patents fall into this, uh, this habit of using uh yeah, well they're using language that is specifically has been specifically evolved for patents, and it gets you know, those who was it. It's it's something in the art. It's like those who are knowledgeable in the art will see that blah blah blah blah blah.

You start reading it and you're thinking, this sounds like this sounds like this patent could easily be one quarter of the length if they dropped all those kind of kind of pretension. Yeah. Yeah, and this one pre dates a lot of that, so it's pretty straightforward. I think the patent issued was in the seventeen thousands at that point, so it's pretty early in the patent system. So eighteen fifty nine, a couple of things happened. First of all,

Moses Farmer continues to innovate in different areas. He he was really one of those, yeah, one of those engineer years back when things were just starting to really take off, like uh, like lights, lightbulbs. He invented yep, he invented an incandescent electric lamp. Um. He didn't invent the light

bulb or anything. Of course Edison didn't either, but uh, he he invented a type of lamp that was one of the earlier incandescent electric lamps, and the same year game Well purchased the patents, or he purchased everything from Channing and Farmer for the for the telegraph system. Yep. He wanted to start installing this in cities everywhere he went. He saw the value in it, and he purchased the entire essentially the entire intellectual property, if you will, of

how this was done. And Channing and Farmer essentially stepped back at this point they had invented it, and now they no longer play a direct role. So here's game Well eighteen fifty nine. He's bought all this stuff. He's ready to go. It's time to become an industrialist. Win. The Civil War breaks out, game wells from South Carolina. He goes back to South Carolina. At the conclusion of the Civil War, the United States government decided to do

something somewhat controversial for those in the Southern States. They seized a lot of patents that were held by Yep, yep, yep. It turned out they sold them at public auction. Yeah, so these are our property, will sell them an auction now, So Gamewell loses his patents. Uh. In eighteen sixty seven, John F. Kennard goes to Washington, d C. To go to one of these auctions. He had planned on purchasing the patents that Gamewell had owned, and he had originally

planned on spending about twenty grand on it. And I believe that this was a former employee or a current employee. He was he was affiliated, he was affiliated with Game Well. Uh, he was ready to pay twenty grand for these patents, ended up paying slightly short of ninety bucks for all of them, and he gave them. He gave them back to games Ago boss, and Gamewell said, I see this as the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And they went

into business together. So they together they created the Game Well uh Telegraph Company, the Fire Alarm Telegraph Company, and uh so they go into business and start to really push this right. Um. Meanwhile, I do want to say, um, telegraphy was was big around eighteen sixty one. You got the first transcontinental telegraph line out to California, which beat the Transcontinental rail Road by eight years. F y. I, um, you know, we had a first laying cables easier than

laying railway ties. As it turns out it is that's true. But you know we We We also had the first transatlantic cable three years before a transcontinental UM. It failed two years after it was installed. But that's beside the point, beside the point entirely, um and uh. In those early eighteen sixties, a few other cities were starting to install these telegraph fire alarm systems, you know, usually through citizen petitions to the government, going like, they have this cool

thing that lets them not die in fires. We want that. Yeah, can we not die in fires? Please? Became a common plea Americ in the fifties and sixties. Um. You know, one of those things that's not spelled out in the Constitution, but you know, you just figure that goes into the whole life and liberty thing. Um. In eighteen sixty four, hooked systems were introduced in alarm boxes, and this was an alternate to that hand crank, right, so you simply

pull a hook to generate the correct exactly. Yeah. This was this was the ones the Boston system went from, well a few alarm boxes in s four went from these hand cranks to the hook system. It was decided that this was simplified it and it created less of a chance of failure because once the hook went back into place, the wheel was ready to go. It reduced the odds that someone was going to make the wheel rotate more than once for one thing, because you just

had to pull the hook ones. I think kind of similar to the to the concept between push button and rotary telephones, like it was just less things to screw up, right, Yeah, the few the more idiot proof you make it, the better. By eighteen sixty eight, all of the single boxes in Boston had been replaced with that type of of of alarm system and uh. In eighteen sixty six, Moses Farmer continued his innovative work. He patented a self exciting dynamo.

I don't want to go into any more detail about that. I just want you to try and imagine what a self exciting dynamo is. If you have an idea of what a self exciting dynamo is, and funny ideas are better than not funny ideas, you should let us know tech stuff at discovery dot com because I want to see it, and if you use that email address, we

both get to see it. All right, But we've got a lot more to talk about with this fire system, as well as an actual fire that broke out shortly, just just two decades after the system was in place, and what happened at that time. But before we get into that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, we're back and you were going to bring us up to date with what eighteen sixteen nine, all right, right, or around this time, there were about a hundred and

twelve alarm boxes and service in Boston. UM systems were in place in thirty eight cities across the US, and according to game Well, these systems cost um two thousand, five hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars to set up, which in the day was was like forty five to a hundred and seventy nine thousand dollars and in two day's But but just that that's a whole system, that's

that's an entire system. So when you think about it, that's incredibly cheap compared to the devastation of a fire of ranger fire, right, you know, it was also right and this is this is why they were starting to become Over the next couple of decades, they would be rolling out in enormous numbers, right, so, partially because okay, so um so eighteen seventy two. Uh, this is what was known as the Great Boston Fire. It was not a pleasant experience. So eighteen seventy two, a fire begins

in the basement of a five story warehouse. We're still not sure what caused it. It was on Kingston and as Summer Streets yep November nine two. It might have been caused by a coal spark from a steam boiler. So, in other words, this is a boiler that you put water in it, you create a fire from coal. The fire heats up the water, which converts it to steam that then can be used to heat a building or

do other work. So there's some suspicion that perhaps a spark from this coal fire is what started it all off. At any rate, a fire started and the building was what we would call crazy flammable or even inflammable because they mean the same thing completely engulfed pretty shortly. Um. This this this occurred around seven pm and at seven the first fire alarm was triggered, right, and it was triggered at Summer in Lincoln Streets at box number fifty two.

And from what I understand, citizens kind of took their time, uh triggering the alarm because people just assume someone else had already done it. This, I think falls under that category that a lot of us fall victim to the idea that someone smarter than us has taken care of the problem, that that holds someone else's problem kind of, or just that I would do something, but I'm sure

someone else has already done it. Not. No, it's not so much apathy as it is uh absolute uh surety that you are not the most competent person in the area. I have been victim of this um as I'm sure most people have. But at any rate, additional alarms were struck at seven four and seven and eight pm, which means this was a five alarm fire, which is where

that phrase comes from. Yes, uh, and you know, with the idea being that the more boxes are involved in calling out the alarm, the bigger a fire is exactly, So there you go. If you've ever heard of five alarm fire and wondered where it came from, essentially comes from the This is the idea of multiple alarms triggered for a single fire. This one was a doozy. There were other boxes, of course, that were involved, Box forty eight and Box one three, which for some reason we're

near box fifty two. The numbering system in Boston, I'm sure, was mostly based on chronology, meaning that if you had started off with forty or forty one boxes, and then you add in one part of the city versus another, it makes about as much sense as the house numbering system in certain parts of Atlanta, where you think, oh, well thirty will be Wait now I'm in the what happened? Now it's going backwards. What happened? All these streets are

named peach trees. That also does not help. Uh So, anyway, at least three boxes, probably more, we're involved in signaling alarms to the central operator. And so pretty soon by every single fire station in Boston had been alerted to this fire and to where the where it was coming from. Um help came in for them from all around Boston, as as far away as a New Haven, Connecticut, and Manchester, Manchester, New Hampshire. Yeah, it's kind of crazy how far away

they were. There were firefighters who were putting equipment on railroads, on railroads, on trains which were in turn on railroads, and shipping them down to Boston in response to this fire. Because you know, when you're talking about a fire of this magnitude, and you're talking about the technology of eighteen seventy two. It's not like they're going to necessarily be able to get under control in a matter of hours.

The Great Fire of London which happened back in sixteen sixty six, that took three days to get to put out, So you know that these fires could last a really long time. Now, despite this amazing fire alert system, there were still huge problems in fighting this fire, which had nothing that. The problems had nothing to do with the system. The system worked just as it was intended to the alarm system, right. Um, the hoses, the fire hoses that time.

Unfortunately we're not standardized. So with the hydrants, Yeah, the fire hydrants weren't standardized. Neither with the hoses, which meant that some hoses would not fit some hydrants. That's a problem. Yes, let's see that there was a there was a terrible outbreak of equal distemper a a strangles horse horse flu, which is a bacterial infection caused by by a strain of strap. So this is an extremely virulent, fast acting virus that is frequently fatal, I believe. Yeah, And and

even if it didn't kill a horse. The horse was essentially out of commission. Now this again and had to be quarantined. So this is before automotives. This is when you know, you your fire engines were horse drawn, So now there aren't any horses at this time. That means that they had to be man and drawn. Yeah. Yeah, you'd hook up a team of men to your fire engine and have them tug it to wherever it was that needed to go. So you had hydrants and hoses

that didn't necessarily fit each other. There was also a water pressure problem in that particular district. This was in a commercial district of Boston, so lots of warehouses and factories. Not very many homes in this part of Boston, but

lots of commercial buildings. And in fact, the fire chief of Boston had been telling the city for a couple of years that they really needed to address the problem of water pressure, but no one had really taken any efforts to do it, mostly because you know, at the time, the accusations are all about how everything was very political and they didn't want to take attention away from more

political matters to deal with this very practical problem. However, because the water pressure was low, it wasn't sufficient to get water to the higher levels of some of these warehouses. And because we're talking about warehouses that were some were four or five stories tall, they were taller than most fire ladders were. So firefighters couldn't get to where the flames actually were, either with water or with ladders, and it was really a problem. It meant that the fire

just continued to spread. So that led some people to come up with a brilliant plan of a way of of of destroying the links between buildings so the fire could no longer spread further outward that was blowing them up. Yet they blowed them up real good with gunpowder. Now again, the fire chief initially was very much against this because frankly, a lot of the people who wanted to use this

were not trained in the use of gunpowder. And as it turns out, if you are not trained in explosives, you have a very strong possibility of blowing yourself up along with whatever it is you're planning to destroy. And in fact that there were many injuries reported as a as a result of some of the explosions. But it was an attempt to create what are called fire breaks. These are those those breaks between buildings so that the fire can cannot jump from one building to the next.

Depending upon the report you read, this was fairly successful and it helped keep the fire under control. Other reports say that it didn't you know that that it didn't have a really noticeable effect on actually fighting the fire, but it certainly made it more complicated. The fire chief was overruled by the city government that said, you know, it's fine for them to use this. He was not entirely happy. The fire chief, by the way, his name is was John Damrell. He was pretty much a hero

during this whole process. He was coordinating everything. However, because the devastation was so vast. There were seven seventy six buildings destroyed around that number anyway again that I see seven hundred depending upon the report, uh and and around seventy three million dollars and damages at that time. Although um only and I mean, I mean, you know, any any deaths are tragic, but they're only Thirteen people died in the fire, um, including two members of the Boston

Fire Department. Ye. Most of the buildings were in the commercial district, like we said, so they weren't residents, and so if it had been in a residential area, obviously those numbers would be different. So that considering the of a staying nature of this fire, that was that was It's hard to call it a silver lining, but it could have been worked. So Fire Chief John Damrell had warned the city he had tried to work against some of the plans of using gunpowder. He coordinated the efforts.

How was he rewarded well? He went on to organize the National Association of Fire Chiefs. But eighteen seventy two was when the fire broke out, and by eighteen seventy four he had been replaced as fire chief of Boston. Congratulations, fire chief, are doing a great job and telling us all the things that we needed to hear because it wasn't political. We're gonna put all the blame on you for the fact that this fire was bigger than what

it should have been. Instead of crediting you, we're gonna put the blame on you and you lose your job. He would actually go on to become the building inspector for Boston. Like instead of becoming better, he actually took on a different role and made sure that building codes and fire codes were enforceable by law. Right right. He he went at the system in a different way and said, if you're not going to listen to me this way,

then I can do it this way. I can at least make this enforceable to make sure this doesn't happen again. So because of the work he did and the work of other people who who followed him, they the building codes for Boston changed, the materials used in construction, changed the the actual uh the way things were constructed so that they weren't built necessarily so close together. That changed another interesting point early on with this whole fire system.

Perhaps you could call it ironic that the the central system we had talked about, the central office where everything came through, was actually originally housed in an extremely flammable building. Isn't a building that was crammed up against other buildings and could have easily caught on fire, but eventually was moved to a different location and in fact is now part of the Parks department. It's still operational. I mean, this is still a working fire safety department, and it

it be cause it's in the parks. That means no one else can build there. So it's the closest building is two fifty feet away from this and that is regulated in in the laws forever. Yea, So there's not it's made out of flame retardet material and it's not close to any other buildings. So now at least the fire alert system on fire, which would be you know interesting, like to get an alert like be a be a firefighter and you get an alert there's a fire? Where

is it in the fire station? That bites Let's go all right, so now we get back over to some more development developments in this system. Now remember, yeah, the tech, the basic principles remain the same, but the interface changes. And another change happened in one UH that was the first key less alarm box, where people said, you know, maybe something that could help make alarm boxes more effective, as if we didn't have to worry about where the

key is when we need to signal the alarm. Now, of course, this does obviously open up the possibility for pranks or mistaken UH calls. There might be and you know, the occasional alarm where someone legitimately thought something was on fire and it turns out it's not. So it's not like I don't want to suggest that only hooligans were going around pulling fire alarms, but also they changed the

actual handle. They went to the T handle approach, which shaped like the letter T, which is why it's called that. So you've probably seen ones like this. It's a little lever and you pull it down and that's what activates it. But otherwise it did the exact same thing as the previous generations. Um. The first one that had this kind of UH alarm system was box number forty two, which

is at the intersection of Tremont and Winter Streets. And by the way, when I started mispronouncing Boston streets, uh, I'm sure that both of us have been doing a whole lot of that. I've only been to Boston once, and I did not go to that many streets. I went to an aquarium in the Science Museum, both of

which were lovely. On May two of eight eight one, the city government ordered that all fire alarm boxes were to be painted red instead of black, which probably made it a lot easier to find them at night in the dark. Yeah, when you're when you're told at night that the nearest alarm boxes a block away and it's it's painted black, you might start to consider certain phrases in your mind to describe the decision to paint said

boxes black in the first place. They would later be painted green and are now back to red again as of this current date. Oh, I didn't even know they had changed to green. Yeah, that's why I don't think it was for another another while. UM And and at this point in time, systems, these UM, these game Well systems were in place in a hundred and three cities. UH. In eight two, they decided to install another new technology as part of the central office. This one called the telemophone.

Yes ahoihoi so telephone was ordered to be installed at the central Office in the fire alarm headquarters, which was different than the central office and most firehouses or fire stations. But it would take about three years before they actually managed to outfit all of the system with these new fangled telephones. UM. During during that decade from from about eighteen eighty eight, that the number of telegraph fire alarm systems jumped from about a hundred to about seven hundred

and fifty across the country. About five of those game well, I'm sorry, about five hundred of those game well and in another two hundred something something something. UM rival companies that were starting to open up clearly game. Well was ahead of the game. One might say, well ahead of the game. Goodness, Lauren wouldn't, but I would. I would not at all. That's when the first underground fire alarm cable was installed. Now, all previous cables, of course, were

strung out over head. They were you know, across rooftops. They had their own glass insulators that held them. This one was a cable that would go under the ground. The first box connected to the underground cable was box number fifty four on Beach Street in eighteen nine, and a year later, several alarm boxes were equipped with red electric lamp indicators. So now you have the audible alarm as well as the red light that could light up

when an alarm box was triggered. By seven, all of the alarm boxes in Boston were equipped with keyless doors. So that finally rolled out after you know, more than a decade, and then uh in nt uh the current Fire Alarm Office of Boston opens. Now you remember we said that it moved from when we were talking about it's in Kaway Park and um, it's it's got that good cushi zone around it, yep, and it's uh. It took all of two minutes when it officially opened before

the first alarm came in. So eight a m. It opens, eight oh two, they get their first alarm. Yeah, uh, and it was from box which was located at Westland Avenue. Probably still is probably doubt that Boston has moved around that much. I have not noticed it doing so. They could have renamed the street that's sometimes um and it's and it's still as of Boston was still the only

city with a telegraph alarm system that made this paper record. Wow, that is incredible because that paper record is important, definitely. I mean, that's a historical document all on its own. And again, by looking at that record over lengths of time, you could see if there were parts of the city that perhaps needed to be looked at more closely because of the frequency of fires that are breaking out. So it's kind of interesting to me that that they were

the only ones really doing it at that point. It's it's a vague possibility that that um game well exaggerated that figure for the purpose. I believe the document I read it in was a pamphlet had been that's fair. Well, let me ask you this, because I've got a huge jump in time now from nine to three. Do you have anything you want to fill in between those years? I do not. It was it was a boring time for alarm telegraph systems, right, I mean, we had a

couple of world wars and a depression in there. But other than that, and maybe you know, some occasional fires, but beyond that, I I guess we should mention that you know that this was when you know, during that time, we went from the what seven and fifty something to over two boxes box systems across the country. And also by by the time you get to three, there were a lot of cities that had installed the telegraph systems

that were now decommissioning them. But we'll talk more about that towards the end, because there's some interesting facts and figures about that. Okay, So nineteen eighty three, the Boston Fire Commissioner George Paul announced plans to phase out this alarm system, which was over a century old almost it's

like a hund and thirty one years old at this point. Uh, he had he said that he wanted to phase it out over the following seven years, so it would have concluded in nineteen Now, why would he want to get rid of a system that had been in working order for more than a century. Out of the working order was not hugely working. There were a lot of problems. Yeah. First of all, he said that there were that the vast majority of alarms that were coming in through this

system were false alarms. Whether those were pranks or mistakes doesn't really matter. He was saying that over of all alarms received through the system were false and and that furthermore, each false alarm was costing U the city like seven hundred bucks. Yeah, which meant that it costs the taxpayers seven hundred bucks per false alarm. And uh, and that's because you figure out the cost of the firefighters, the fuel needed for the fire engine, all the equipment, and

then just the time wasted. So that was kind of a figure that he had he had cited in his decision to phase this out. And he said that only two point four percent of all structural fires were reported through the use of these boxes. So not only are most of the reports coming in false the ones that are actual fires, the only two point four percent were coming in through boxes in the first place. Otherwise they were getting them through other means, whether it was radio, telephone, whatever,

but they were getting their information in other ways. So he was saying that it's an obsolete system that is giving us more false alarms than than active ones. We should get rid of it now. Despite this, the system stays in place. So even though he cites this plan and he gives his reasons and they seem like pretty solid ones, nothing happens. I don't know the reason for that. I don't know if there was a lot of resistance. Bostonians can sometimes be considered a somewhat stubborn lot, perhaps

some kind of a historical society lobby. Um. Boston is also a very very big city for for historical preservation. Yep, yep, um. Maybe they're just full of beans. It is Beantown, face it, alright. So anyway, the system doesn't go anywhere. It stays in place. So Boston does something incredible. They update the system with electronic decoding terminals, and at that time they are about fifteen hundred or so far alarm boxes on streets and

another one thousand in public and private buildings. There are more now, but or so total across the city. They maintain the fact that it is um independent of telephone and grid electric lines, right, meaning that if the telephone system fails, if the electric system fails, this system will

still work. That's actually one of, probably one of the reasons why it stayed in place, because even though you could argue that you are getting more false alarms than real ones, and that you are getting most of your information through other means, anyway, this was a rely a bowl method of reporting a fire that was completely independent of other systems, So even if other systems failed, you

could still rely on this. I'm guessing that's one of the reasons why it remained active even after the fire commissioner had planned on phasing it out. Now UM around around this time, ish, I I know definitely. As of two thousand three, UM, game Well had been acquired by a company called Honeywell International UM and no longer makes new telegraph systems. However, they do still continue to support the existing ones, right. Yeah, that warranty was serious business.

Let me tell you, way better than my TV. Yes. So, Honeywell now is the parent company, the owner of the game Well company. UM and in early this year, we're recording this in for those of you in the future who are listening back on this episode. Hi, where's my jet pack? But in the Boston government actually opened up a forum of dialogue and said, Hey, Bostonians, how would you update our fire alarm system? What would you do

to bring it into the twenty first century? What capabilities should it have, what what technology should it be built upon. So now we're talking about finally perhaps switching this from the telegraph system it's been based on since eighteen fifty two. So we might actually see a new fire alarm system rolled out in Boston over the next few years that will be similar perhaps to what is exists now, but

built on a completely different technology. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still had its own independent power system so that it could maintain, because I think that's one of the most important parts. Sure. Sure, and and a lot of towns are taking down their their telegraph systems these

days in favor of radio signal alarm systems. UM. You know, And and like we said, those those benefits are really just that, you know, if if there's an earthquake and it brings telephone and power down, or um, if there's some kind of computer glitch that brings down a nine one one system. UM. Both of these things are things that have happened and UH in earthquake in San Francisco two thousand four glitch in the New York City UH system, the boxes can still operate and can still get messages

that will save lives and property. We've even seen, you know, during big catastrophes or even just large events where cellular networks get completely overwhelmed with traffic and you can't get a call in or out of them. This would still be a system that would work under that, Because, I mean, more and more people are moving away from landlines. But just because you have a cellular phone doesn't mean that you can always depend upon it. There are gonna be

times where systems are gonna get overwhelmed. So having an independent system that doesn't need to tie into any of those things has a lot of appeal. Sure, the upkeep on them is very expensive. Those Sacramento is hope and hoping that dismantling its system is going to save the city UM five thousand dollars per year UM. And upkeep so so cheap to install, expensive to maintain. I see how they get you. You know that the wires are susceptible to wear, and unlike other utility systems that a

city would buy into it's it's a unitasker. It's not it's not like this can be used for anything else. Brown would hate it. Yes, thank you to Alton Brown for totally what I was thinking of. Yeah, there are a lot of cities that are turning those old boxes into art. They make it into like an art exhibit. So you know, they're not getting rid of the infrastructure in the sense of like taking down the boxes. They're letting it not be updated anymore. It's just becoming something

that's meant for. Yeah, speaking of historical I wanted in

this kind of talking about the Boston Fire Museum. Uh. The website, by the way, was very helpful putting together a lot of the information for this podcast, so I recommend looking at But according to the website, the Austin Fire Museum has some of the old equipment from the eighteen fifty two system on display, including a box transmitter which was designed to re transmit information from alarm boxes to fire stations, and it's tied into the tapper circuit

of the Boston fire alarm system. But whenever anything goes off, it rings the bell. It rings the bell and types out the tape so you can actually see if you can read the Morse code. You'll see which box number triggered that alarm, so you if you are there when the alarm is triggered, it'll go off and you'll be able to see it in action. I don't recommend that

you orchestrate this so that you can actually see it. Uh. I hope that if you do go to the museum that it remains inactive, because that means there's not a fire hopefully, but but still kind of a cool thing. I think it's kind of neat that it's tied. It's actively tied into the system. Now, nothing is dependent upon

this particular piece of technology. It's just it's just tapped into. Yeah, for a certain amount of anything, like, wow, it still works, and you think that either means someone's being naughty or someone is on fire. I hope everyone's okay, exactly, So it's that weird moment of wow. Oh but anyway, I thought it was really cool. So anyway that I except

this discussion. I love this topic. I love taking stuff that has this historic aspect to it, something that I didn't really know very much about before we started researching it. In fact, this was all new information for me, so

and of course, I love learning things. That was really exciting. Guys, if there's anything along these lines, something that is historical and technological, keep in mind the Hard Technology podcast that you would like to hear more about something that you've always heard about and you thought, how did that work

and what was it successful? Let us know, says an email tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or you can get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, just like our listener did Hey, did you ever figure out who it was? Yes? That was listener Ben via Twitter. Ben, thanks so much for the suggestion. I know that this is a little bit different from let you ask, but I hope you enjoyed it, so be like then contact us.

Remember Facebook and Twitter. We are tech Stuff hs W and Lauren and I will touch you again Willison for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com