Hi everyone, I recently purchased the complete second season (1977/1978) of Eight Is Enough and one of the episodes titled Children Of The Groom part 2 (original airdate November 9th, 1977) features a brief scene with what I do believe is an old Honeywell TC49 smoke detector. Most likely a battery unit but hard to tell. The sound it makes as sounds like it is dubbed in. I would love to post this video on here but I don’t know exactly how to transfer video from a DVD onto my computer. I have tried though. If someone can help me that is great. This is probably the earliest that smoke detectors have appeared on TV shows or movies at least from what I have seen. I could be wrong though. Sometime next month I will get getting the complete third season of this show and there is another episode titled You Won’t Have Nicholas To Kick Around Anymore (original airdate November 29th, 1978) that features a GE Home Sentry. Not sure of the exact model though but is the square unit with the red test button and the sound is definitely dubbed in on this one. I would love to post that video when the time comes. I grew up watching the original series of Eight Is Enough (1977-1981). So far I only have the first two seasons.
Sorry guys I didn’t realize when I posted this earlier the morning that I did it under the wrong topic heading. I don’t know how to delete the original however I did copy and paste it under Alarms on TV/movies.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4uni1k
Found it, it’s at 19:45 in the video. Looks to me like at TC49A AC alarm, unless they had a TC89 variant had had a LED indicator. The sound is definitely synthesized, I tried lowering it in GoldWave but it still didn’t sound like the actual alarm, sounded more like a synthetic organ. Cool find!
Thank you Fire Alarm Fan. I can’t believe these episodes are online. Thought the sound of it was synthesized. I wasn’t sure of it was the AC or battery TC49 though. I also found the episode from November 1978 with the GE Home Sentry and this episode is a two parter. In the first part you see a brief shot of the detector’s base and I think it is the battery version but not sure if it is 9 volt or the rare 12.0 volt. The smoke can be seen at 41.23 in the video. This episode was also one of the more dramatic ones of the series rather than comedy despite the fact that it had a laugh track.
Here is the second part of the episode. The detector with the cover on is shown at 6:47 and again and 46;15. Now the sound of the detector on this one is definitely synthesized. It sounds more like my Gardsman Bell. No GE Home Sentry or any smoke detector from that era sounded like that. Again it is a cool find and a rare find. I do still believe this is the earliest smoke detectors were ever shown on a tv show. If I am wrong let me know. I was in kindergarten at the time this episode originally aired.
I have seen this episode when I was younger. The most recent up until today that I saw this episode was 2003. During the second part of the episode the position of the GE Home Sentry is slightly different on the close up view than it is far away during the first scene. I had to look at it carefully. However during the second scene the close up and far away position of it are exactly the same. Funny how years later I am just noticing this. :lol: I do say the way Tom was testing the detector was a little dangerous with a match. He could have set the detector on fire. Still it is an interesting episode for its time.
I actually have a couple of those Edwards 28- series smokes shown in the first post. I think they’re at my parents house. I’ll upload a pic if I find them.
I can’t remember if I had posted this or this was posted on here but I found a Kmart print ad for the First Alert smoke detectors models SA76R and SA120. The ad is from December 8, 1979. I thought the SA120 came out in 1980 so maybe there was an SA120 with a squealer horn originally? Interesting ad and the prices of the detectors compared to that of today wow big change. Im guess both these detectors had squealer horns.
Interesting how the “SA76R” (actually the SA76RC) has 8 side vents like the -120, rather than 6 like we normally see. I wonder if this was an extremely rare variant? Also I think most SA120s used the piezo horn, but again maybe there were very early ones (maybe even ones that were only beta designs and never saw a public release) that used the squealer horns.
It would be interesting to see a video of an early SA120 with a squealer horn. Im also thinking since the SA76R pictured here had to have been some kind of rare detector or a variant. Also too if this was 1979 wouldn’t it have still been the SA76RS (squealer horn) and not an RC? Again both detectors appeared a year later in 1980 but since the ad is from December 1979 they could have been early models for 1980 if that makes sense. I have never seen an RC with 8 vents either so definitely again rare but I didn’t think smokes had piezos yet in 1979. None that I heard back then did, only squealers.
Guardion FB-1
Gard•Site, thinking of getting one after I move.
Cool detectors FireAlarmFan. That Guard*Site one looks like the JC Penney smoke detector and also somewhat looks like my Nortron unit. I saw some of your videos on youtube. Did you say you might be getting rid of some of your detectors? If I heard it wrong please forgive me. If you are though I wouldn’t mind taken them off your hands. Again I don’t have an Ebay account though. I hope you do end up getting these detectors. They are neat older units.
Here is a pic from August 1978 of the Dicon 200 my parents had in there home. This pic is showing the detector with the cover open.
http://www.cu80years.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1978-aug-cover-356x521.jpg
Yeah as I suspected it’s identical to the Oster.
Yep the Oster is based on this unit. I always knew these two detectors were almost one in the same except for the shapes of the detectors. Dicon (circle) and Oster (square), This detector as I have been saying was the source of my childhood nightmares.
Some type of Simplex.
Unknown.
I can’t seem to view your images. Where did you upload them?
Google photos
I would use Flickr as it seems that the way you are uploading it on Google, doesn’t allow for other people to view it.