I have a few questions about the fire alarms that were used in various schools in the school district I attended.
I went to the schools in a public school district in the Philadelphia suburbs. Each of the 4 schools I attended was built at a different time, but they were all from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s. As each was built at a different time, each had a different fire alarm system.
The first elementary school I attended opened in 1955 and had an Edwards fire alarm system, including Adaptabels in the school (which I remember as being extraordinarily loud) and 2 Adaptahorns on the school’s exterior. When we returned from summer break one year, which I’m estimating was around 1980, hallways inside the school now also had “fire lights”: beacons mounted to the ceilings with rotating yellow lamps. These activated with the fire alarm and were, as I remember from fire drills, deactivated after the fire alarm stopped sounding. They were generally located across the building at 1 or 2 per corridor and 1 per larger room, such as the gymnasium and cafeteria.
When I later attended another elementary school in the same district, and the junior high and high schools, I saw that those schools, too, had been retrofitted with these “fire lights”.
What was the purpose of these beacons? Who made them and why have I never seen them anywhere else?
Unusual if you ask me: bells on the inside, horns on the outside: one would think that either bells or horns would be used everywhere, but not both together.
I honestly have no idea why any place would have rotating amber beacons given pretty much all of them are not made for use with fire alarm systems, I doubt are approved by anyone for such an application, & are not the right color for fire signaling either (which is clear), unless it’s just something that your district specifically requires (for whatever reason). Heck that sounds more like the average Hollywood fire alarm system: no strobes anywhere, just big red rotating beacons.
As for who made them, my initial assumption is that they were Edwards Adaptabeacons especially given the prevalence of Edwards devices in the building, but unless you can remember specifically what they looked like or have a picture of one of them I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure who made them (& their model for that matter).
Funny you should ask about the horns. I remember in kindergarten/1st grade/2nd grade having fire drills, and standing outside while the alarm was still sounding. I could of course still hear the bells sounding inside, but I could also hear a buzzing or humming noise, which my child brain at the time associated simply with the system being in operation. It was only years later that I connected the buzzing with the 2 outside horns. The horns were also unusually located: not next to a main entrance, or pointed toward playgrounds or fields, but on 2 sides of the building. As those 2 sides were the sides nearest to the surrounding residential houses, my assumption is that they were there to alert nearby residents if the fire alarm sounded after hours? That’s the only reason I can think of.
The building was decommissioned by the school district in the early 1980s and is now operated by a private school. I’ve peeked inside since then and seen that a new fire alarm system was installed at some point. The beacons are gone, but all the old Edwards devices (bells and pull stations inside, horns outside) are still there.
As for the beacons there and in the other schools…I would love to know. Apparently, a decision was made around 1980 that all the district schools needed them. To my knowledge, all of the buildings have since either been replaced or outfitted with newer systems that have strobes, and the beacons are all gone.
I’m fairly certain I took at least one picture of one of the beacons at one time, or it might even be visible in a school yearbook. I’ll look for a picture when I’m back home and post it.
Huh, good point: horns would definitely be more audible than bells in that particular location.
My only guess is that the beacons were installed when regulations were less strict, but once they became such the beacons had to go (as like I said they’re not meant or approved for fire alarm service). Any idea if the system had any visual signals other than the beacons? (& if it has any today for that matter)
Both of the elementary schools had no visual signals other than the beacons.
The junior high school did have strobes in the gymnasiums. I wonder if they were part of the original system in the junior high school? I believe the junior high school’s alarm system was supplied by Couch, and the strobes were on silver-colored mounting plates high up on the walls in the gymnasiums, and had a sticker on them that read “FIRE”.
The senior high school, built in the mid- to late-50s, was a mixed bag. The system was coded with 10-inch bells, which came in 3 different colors. Most of the bells were black, and a few were either red or gray - I guess those were later replacements? In one hallway there was a horn/strobe on the wall directly outside of the library that emitted a slow whoop. Finally, there were the rotating beacons that were added around 1980, except that one of the beacons was not a rotating beacon, but rather emitted a yellow pulse every few seconds. The pull stations were fun: they were huge, looked like they were made out of cast iron, and had the small break glass window in front to open them, and then a metal hook inside that had to be pulled down and released.
Makes me think of the Notifier Emhart NWS-24, as that’s one of the few devices I know of that came in silver, but they could also be super-rare older Whelen VSA-24s (there isn’t a picture of one of these anywhere online as far as I know: I only know about them thanks to an Ebay lot containing one that I bought once).
From what I’ve seen very early fire alarm bells were often black or gray, but of course nowdays fire alarm signals in general are almost always red or white, with gray being reserved for non-fire alarm signals (AKA general signaling devices). It’s also possible that some of the gray & black bells were school bells rather than fire alarm bells.
Sounds like either a multi-tone electronic horn/strobe or a speaker/strobe to me (which are the only two types of notification appliance capable of emitting such a sound), definitely unusual to find in a system with mostly bells though.
Hmm, could have been either a strobe beacon or a rotating beacon connected to a coded circuit, which would have caused it to pulse on every now & then instead of remaining on continuously.
