Any info on these panels?



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As indicated by the label that’s a Simplex 4246-2. It’s a very old & very rare panel; they were sold from the early 60s to supposedly 1971 according to wiley209.

Thanks! I bought it off of eBay for a very good deal not too long ago.

Glad to know it’s in the hands of a collector & not still in a building where it could be gutted or junked by a technician unaware of how rare these panels are.

I see you connected a 24VAC Edwards bell to it, probably to act as a trouble bell (funnily enough I saw a couple photos of a German Simplex 4208 the other day & noticed it had an Edwards bell hooked to it as well), & that you interfaced it to the panel (which is 120VAC) using what I assume is a 120VAC-to-24VAC transformer.

By the way, welcome to The Fire Panel Forums.

Yep, used a 120 to 20 volt, wich is just enough to run it. And thanks, I’m glad to be here.

Old School Fire Alarms would know for sure, it looks like an IBM panel from the 50s, when Simplex and IBM were in some partnership and created the infamous 4030.

Did you get the horn above the panel as well? That looks like a Simplex 4040 or 4050 horn.

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I don’t know if IBM & Simplex ever had a partnership together but I believe Simplex only got into the fire alarm industry when IBM sold them their fire alarm division in 1958 (along with their clock division too I think), that’s why IBM & early Simplex fire alarm devices have similar (or even identical) designs.

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It’s a 4040 I think, I’ll have to look, whatever the 12 VAC model is, I got it at a different time, also from eBay though.

That is so cool!! My high school, I bet you can guess what high school I go to, has a 4247-2 from 1972 or 73 with 4251-20s & 30s, 4255 series heat sensors, and very rare black label 4050 horns that operate on 6 volts AC and have those Faraday 5001 & 5002 projector horns on them! Have you seen that video on my YouTube channel?

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Those are amazing old panels. Crazy how they still plug along today like they did back in the day as opposed to modern crap that seems to always have something fail. I have one of these panels in my collection as well. It is a special unit model with an auto silence timer.

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What’s your youtube channel name? I don’t believe I have ever seen the video you speak of.

NEOhistoryfan101 is my YT channel name.

It should be the first fire drill video with the system tour at the end!

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I wonder this. As I have both a Canadian IBM 4246-2 (made at IBM in Toronto), and a Simplex 4246-2. Both look very similar, with some slight differences. I’ll have to take comparison photos sometime.

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Please do. Im curious as to what the differences are.

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