I actually like mass’es more than classics
Well, Federal Signal still makes the 450E horns and SelecTone speakers, and rebrands STI push stations They’re still around, but are mostly used in industrial settings. If they were still around, they’d probably use the 450E’s for standard systems and 25/70V versions of the SelecTone speakers for voice evac settings. As for initiation, they’d probably use the 4050 series pulls, or rebrand RMS pull stations, or STI push stations, and more recently Global ReSet call points
What if STI made traditional pull stations?
Here’s one that actually will have a big impact on subsequent events. What if Tyco never purchased Simplex Time Recorder? Take time to look into the history and think about how differently events will turn out if the purchase never happened
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They likely wouldn’t be as proprietary
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I highly doubt that for several reasons. The 4100 Classic was released in 1988, over ten years before the purchase occurred, and was proprietary. The 2120 was its predecessor which required complex equations to program, was addressable, and very advanced for its time. Finally, many other unrelated companies also became proprietary as we’ve seen.
You’re also neglecting to consider the Tyco side of things. At the time of the merger, Tyco had the companies of Thorn, Autocall, and Grinnell under its ownership for a decent amount of time.
In 1976, Tyco bought the fire safety division of Grinnell. In 1990, Autocall was purchased by Wormald International, which then sold it to to Thorn Security. In 1996, Grinnell purchased Thorn, and thus Autocall.
These hypotheticals, while seemingly inconsequential at first, can actually have a much bigger divergence in events than “X company won’t be proprietary”, especially when they were already proprietary before the event in question happened.
What I assume is that some Simplex products would’ve not exist like the ES series. I think the TrueAlerts would be still around since Simplex made them prior to the Tyco buyout. Not sure how the 4100U would’ve been in this alternative timeline. The 4006 and 4008 might’ve not exist as is. I heard on Facebook that ADT made the 4006 and 4008. I don’t know if Simplex would’ve made the weatherproof TrueAlerts, TrueAlert Chime strobes/Chimes/Mutitone.
I think the 4004, 4005 and 4010 would’ve gotten a upgrade at some point but it won’t be the ES series.
The 4003EC might’ve been different.
As for Tyco, Autocall might’ve stayed around for longer and may still be around today. Autocall might be a obscure company with there products not being common.
As for Johnson Controls, if they never merged with Tyco, they would be still selling rebranded Notifier equipment with there own rebranded Inspire panels.
Now if they Tyco/Johnson Controls merger happened, Autocall would replace the JCI Notifier line with Autocall kinda like how Simplex replaced the JCI notifier line.
I don’t know how Simplex would be if they continue to do there stuff in house or get a network of Simplex distributors like how Notifier, Gamewell FCI and EST does.
Here’s my time line of this alternate time line
2001: Simplex releases the 4100U, it would be the same 4100U as in our timeline
2003: Simplex redesigns the 4020 and makes a 4020U
2006: The 4004 and 4005 get a redesign. The “4004U” would be a 5 zone conventional panel expandable up to 10 zones. The “4005U” would be a 10 zone panel expandable up to 50 zones. Both of these panels would get Smart Sync and maybe Wheelock sync
2009: The 4003 gets replaced by the 4003EC, same as our time line’s 4003EC but might have different tones and messages
2010: Simplex redesigns the 4010 and to add feats so it can compete with the Notifier FireWarden series and EST IO series. It would be called the 4010UX
2011: the TrueAlert series get a redesign.
2014: The 4100U get redesigned for a “4100UX” and the 4020U gets replaced with a 4020UX
2019: The entire 4005U,4004U and 4010UX would be replaced for ES series (stand for economy series) the 4005ES and 4004ES would be same as there U counterpart but those have a redesigned interface. The 4010ES would be a 250 point panel that would be expandable to 500 points. The 4020UX would be discontinued
2023: The Truealerts would get yet again another redesign. Probably LED
Mirtone did still use their name under EST. I know, as we carry Kidde products. We still have a few older boxes of EST modules that are actually labelled ‘Mirtone’. I’ll take a picture next time.
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My guess is Simplex would still make the ES, maybe with a different name. More than likely they’d still make the weatherproof TrueAlerts at some point rather than keep rebrand Wheelock devices.
As for Tyco, they’d probably keep producing alarms under the Thorn Autocall brand with the 4050 pulls and Space Age Electronics signals. Given the VA4 was being after before Tyco bought Simplex and SAE signals were used on Autocall systems, it is possible that we’d get another series of signals after the VA4 that is more compact due to having a lot of demand from Tyco selling the systems and using their signals.
Overall, it would be interesting to see a modern Autocall system in a timeline where they never were touched by Simplex, and the same vice versa.
Here’s another question, this was asked on the forums in the past.
What if Honeywell acquired Simplex instead of Tyco.
Then simplex devices would use the same addressable protocol that Honeywell systems use
What if gamewell and fci never merged
Would gamewell still be making the century’s and master boxes
Would fci still be making the ms-2 and ms-6 pull stations
God, I wish the ms-2 and the century were still made.
Those were some good pull stations. It’s sad that they had to discontinue them
I’m not so sure about that, the 4100 Classic was addressable and made long before the Tyco purchase. I highly doubt they would get rid of that, especially with how many facilities would have sometimes thousands of devices. It would cause there to be so many different devices, since many applications would still use the dipswitch addressable devices. They would also need to create cards that could accept the new protocol, as well as still making cards that accept the old one. Additionally, Simplex and Honeywell protocols have different SLC limitations, so ifa card was discontinued or unavailable, and you needed to replace an entire SLC, you might run out of devices on the one SLC, where you wouldn’t on the other. It would cause a lot of complexity that doesn’t need to happen
Likely, Honeywell would have Simplex as their proprietary line in this scenario since that would be more cost effective since the amount of compatibility and retrofit devices and peripherals would be greatly reduced.
That kind of ties into the first question tangentially. Likely, they would still both eventually switch to the BG-12 series of pulls. Hell, both companies rebranded them even before they merged. It is possible Gamewell would stay with their old addressable format due to how many legacy devices were out there. The merge used FCI’s addressable protocol as it was used for other Honeywell brands. In that instance, it was cheaper to use one main line and still support legacy products as needed, much like how Tyco made Simplex the dominant brand and supported legacy Thorn products.
Without knowing whether Honeywell purchased Gamewell, Gamewell was an independent company, or was still part of the Cerberus group, it’s tough to tell exactly where the company would go. FCI on the other hand, would probably continue as a Honeywell brand, just with different products after when the merger happened in our timeline
Gamewell very much still makes Masterboxes as many municipalities still use them. While it seems the Century series was phased out, G-FCI seemingly still sells the MS-2 and MS-6 series pulls, likely for jurisdictions that require metal pull stations.
These questions require a bit more research than just surface level guesses. While some hypotheticals might be impossible to fully predict, a decent amount of research will definitely point to a probable path.
I conclude this post with the following; what if EU, agreeing with the FTC, allowed the General Electric and Honeywell merger?
Here’s my answer to my own question.
This would happen in 2001
Tyco and JCI would be the same as if they never bought out Simplex
Simplex might’ve been the biggest brand Honeywell has.
IDNET would still be around today but as a legacy protocol since everything has switched to a rebranded FlashScan
The 2099s/4099s would’ve still been around similar to the FCI MS2s and the Gamewell Century.
Addressable AVs would’ve been integrated to the Spectralert Classics, Advances, and L-Series or the TrueAlerts would’ve been under System Sensor
After the 4004 and 4005, it would be rebranded FireLite panels and maybe rebranded Silent Knight 5208s.
The Gamewell purchase might’ve never happened leading to them being still owned by the Cerberus Group which would be under Siemens.
I’m not sure, I know if Honeywell owned Simplex, it would be a massive difference but it’s hard to predict what would happen. Would Simplex be stuff you get directly from Honeywell while Notifier had the ESDs or would Simplex be a ESD manufacturer like Notifier and Gamewell FCI. This is probably a bad question
Here’s my next question, this is about alarms in general
What if Mass Notification as is started in the 80s or 90s instead of the late 2000s.
That would actually be really cool if Honeywell had done that, but if they also bought gamewell and FCI separately, and kept the century, that would be even cooler
Except they did buy Gamewell and FCI separately. They purchased FCI as a result of their purchase of Pittway in 2000, and later Gamewell in 2003. It wasn’t until 2005 when the companies merged.
What if Honeywell and JCI merged right now?
There would likely be wireless truealerts, and IDNet and IDNAC would be legacy protocols, and everything would be CLIP and Flashscan
Then it’d undoubtedly massively enhance the compatibility among major FA system brands in North America.
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