Edwards 78: Worst pull station ever?

I found an Edwards 78 pull station at a flea market for $2 the other day. At first I thought it was a toy because of how plastic and lightweight it was. In my opinion this is the worst pull station ever manufactured. Here’s a photo:

There’s supposed to be a glass sheet at the bottom, but I broke the glass when I got it. I used a popsicle stick as a replacement for now.

There’s no switch in this unit. There’s a spring-loaded metal contact at the bottom, which is attached to the lever. When the glass is in place, it holds the lever back, thus breaking the connection. When the pull station is activated, the glass breaks and the contacts close. While this does work as intended, I’m sure that over time the contact might become less springy, or that something could get stuck between the two parts, rendering the pull station useless. It just seems dangerous to me.

The front part of the pull station can be removed to install the glass. One cool feature is that the bezel can be rotated to read “Emergency” instead of “Fire.”

Recap as to why I think this pull station is the worst ever (possibly even worse than the BG-10):

– cheap construction
– shoddy, potentially unreliable contacts
– no way to reset the pull station if replacement glass is not available

This would not pass any FM or UL certification.

I think it looks like a chinese toy that can be found on Amazon.com

Well, I think it’s made in China too.

That pull wouldn’t be out of place on a system that consisted of Chinese classic SpectrAlerts.

The pull station can be used to conduct Chinese fire drills.

[quote=Housedays post_id=84729 time=1565130295 user_id=2894]

The pull station can be used to conduct Chinese fire drills.

[/quote]

LOL! :lol:

In my opinion, I think the design could be improved (adding a real switch, not a flimsy metal tab that might break somehow), sure the current design is really poorly executed (IIRC I belive it was discontinued because it didn’t pass UL or FM certifications or something among these lines, AFAIK @EdwardsFan has one of these “pulls” in his collection, and I don’t think the ones he have/had were certified either)

There is also another poorly designed pull station that I can think off (IIRC it was made by Ademco) but cannot recall the model number.