We used them until the mechanical timer apparently burned up. Now it plays over the PA system.
ours is over the intercom but it sounds like a mechanical bell
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Yup, elementary school I went to had bells… Two Legrand bells on the outside (the school had two yards) encased in a wood box), and a bunch of unknown 240V bells in the corridors.
As a matter of fact, I have one of the older bells that was installed there and subsequently taken down when the school was renovated after a fire ravaged the topmost floor.
Junior high used Aviss DS01 sounders on continuous tone (and these sounders have a weird quirk: when they go off in NFS32001/AFNOR tone, they sound in continuous for a split second, so each time there was a fire drill we’d get a good scare by the DS01s as they went off a second time in continuous!) those were replaced by a Bodet chime/clock system in 2019.
High school on the other hand, there was a single Legrand 240V bell (or it could’ve been a Honeywell Friedland “Master Bell”, I don’t remember) that barely went off but was still deafeningly loud.
I remember that in kindergarten, it was this way for a bit, but then they switched to bells over the PA system, and it’s been this way since
The bells were 4 inch (?) beige simplex bells
The intermediate grade building on the campus where I went to high school had them initially when first built in the 60s or 70s. As of when I was last at that school, they used the intercom tone but a couple of the mechanical bells were still intact, and still tied into the main bell system. There was one in the gymnasium and one in the cafeteria room/central pod of the school. They were covered by flush grills and I remember them being no more than 6 inches.
My school has old Simplex/IBM bells inside and outside that ring and the bell is also a tone over the intercom system.
My Catholic K-8 school i attended still uses the original IBM 6 inch bells as start/dismissal signals. STVM (the HS of LeBron James) used mechanical bells until the start of my sophomore year, when they had a PA system upgrade (Rauland to Atlas) with newer speakers in the hallways, locker rooms and gym. They now use a 3 tone chime as the class change signal.
The schools that I have gone to have bells on the outside of the building, but they are all disconnected.
Every school I went to had a certain tone that played over the Telecor system. 1 year in my elementary school the bell tone would ring in march time over the Telecor system if the fire alarm was activated.
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The school that my aunt teaches at had mechanical bells on the outside of the building that were actually connected to the Telecenter system, but that was before they renovated and expanded on to the building about 5 yrs ago. The inside just had the tone.
Also my current school uses the tone that I have seen used on other TCs for the Fire tone, but it’s used as a warning 1min bell.