University Daily Kansan
Fire Alarm System Uses Space Age Techniques
The occasional cry of a stray cat and the drum of rain on garbage pail covers were the only sounds that bettiebert was happening.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. —(UPI)—The streets glimmered in midnight rain. It was quiet; most families were sleeping.
Friday. April 17, 1964
A cruising taxicab driver spotted the fire. Two blocks away, he found a light flickering on top of an alarm box. He raced from his cab, jerked the box open and pulled a lever.
High in the attic of a three-story house, a few threadbare wires were rubbing together. Insulation began to smoke, then burn. A nearby pile of discarded clothes started to smoulder.
SEVERAL MINUTES LATER. flames licked the attic walls and darted through a window.
Instantly, nearly $2.5 million worth of fire alarm equipment—the largest single unit in the country—umped into action.
Mechanism in the box sent a series of impulses which were recorded in two strategic locations—the Memphis Fire Alarm center and a substation between the center and the alarm box. In both places, firemen manning recorders tensed and began to concentrate as the coded signals came in.
IMPULSES SENT FROM the box were electrically transcribed into signals telling the firemen which box was pulled. A quick search of a numbered file told them the box's location and the call numbers of the nearest fire companies.
A vocal alarm operator hit switches opening speaking systems in the stations involved. Through a microphone tied in with the alarm console, he dispatched two pumpers, a hook and ladder truck, a salvage corps truck and a district chief to the scene.
In the station house, the firemen on duty watch had seen the coded signals come in seconds earlier, so he was ready. A loud signal buzzed, waking the other firemen and sending them scurrying into turnout pants, coats and boots.
Thirty seconds after the cab driver pulled the box, fire fighters were on their way to the blaze.
MEMPHIS—LONG CONSIDERED a headquarters of fire education and training, decided several years ago
that it could not afford to settle for less than the most efficient system of dispatching its firemen.
Commissioner Claude A. Armour and Fire Chief E. A. Hamilton had rigid specifications made up, and a contract was awarded to the Gamewell Co. of Upper Newton Falls, Mass. The firm custom built a multimillion dollar alarm system for the new Armour Training Center fire alarm office.
Included in the system are 984 alarm boxes—about one-third equipped with designating lights superimposed to work on the box's power supply; equipment for eight substations located at fire houses throughout the city; and more than 350 miles of underground and aerial cable.
Also included—and focal point of the complex alarm system—is the console at the alarm center. It is the only one of its kind in the country.
THE CONSOLE CONSISTS of a vocal alarm transmitter and receiver, a master recorder for signals from alarm boxes, alarm circuit transmitters and a two-way public address system.
A voice recorder built into the console records on tape everything spoken over the console or its adjoining telephone switchboard. The recorder, which can instantly play back telephone conversations, leaves no margin for error on alarms called in by phone.
The telephone switchboard, which is built into the console, contains direct lines to all the city's 31 fire houses as well as incoming trunk lines for fire and business calls. Dual transmitter-receiver radio equipment is housed in a tiny room adjacent to the alarm console and works in conjunction with it.
The center also features a unique control panel board designed and built by Memphis firemen.
THE BOARD SHOWS at a glance the location of all fire companies as well as district and deputy chiefs. Companies are lettered on a map of the city at the geographic site of their fire houses, and are designated by a white light.
When a company goes to a fire or is out of service for some other reason, the light is turned to red. It is green when the company is out of its house, but in touch with
the alarm center by radio. A similar system is used to keep up with the location of the chiefs, whose names are kept listed next to the map.
"It helps us keep in constant touch with all our equipment," said district chief James R. Boatwright, the assistant chief dispatcher. District Chief A.A. Alexander built the board in the fire department's shop and a local firm wired it.
Boatwright placed the board's value at between $15,000 to $20,000. District Chief Jesse A. Gennette, chief dispatcher, supervises the operations of the complete alarm set up.
The city's new alarm setup already has become a model for other fire departments throughout the country. The principle of an independent alarm box whose signals cannot interfier with those of another box has created almost instantaneous fire service.
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT learns of fires in four ways — through alarm boxes, telephone calls, auxiliary methods (ADT local alarm service), and miscellaneous methods. The latter include persons actually going to a fire station to report a fire; policemen seeing a blaze, and other such wavs.
Memphis — rated in the top fire insurance classification for some years by the National Board of Fire Underwriters — has a total complement of more than 900 on its fire department staff. Of these about 750 are actual fire fighters in 31 stations and seven crash companies at the Metropolitan Airport In 1963, these men answered 12,905 fire alarms
Firemen are dispatched to the scene by use of the vocal alarm circuit, the telegraph circuit (in coded signals), direct line telephone or radio.
And they answer them faster than ever before.
Shake!
NEW YORK—(UPI)—The handshake stems from peaceful desires of primitive civilizations, reports Encyclopedia Americana. Men began the custom by extending their hands to show they were not going to use their weapons.
Mind Gets Emphasis During Leisure Time
AUSTIN, Tex. —(UPI)— A University of Texas psychologist suggests greater emphasis on the use of the mind and less on muscles as a profitable way to spend leisure time.
The expert, Dr. Fillmore H. Sanford, said man's most distinctive attribute is his head. Perhaps his greatest satisfaction can come from the creating and satisfying use of that head, Dr. Sanford figures.
HE PREDICTED A 20-hour work week for the American worker in the near future — "providing there is not a 20-minute war."
Dr. Sanford referred to a special group where he said one can observe both the dangers and the opportunities of increasing amounts of leisure.
"Many of these women," he said. "now find for themselves new careers, new patterns of existence, new ways to contribute to the human enterprise."
But in the future survival of civilization as we know it may depend on man's capacity to use leisure time creatively.
Dr. Sanford said that in the past, man's continued survival depended on his capacity to gain a bare existence from a hostile environment.
He described this group as those middle-class women, in the midforties, whose children have reached maturity.
"In the coming age of leisure," Sanford said, "fortunate is the man who has got himself involved in the accumulation of knowledge.
On the other hand, others do not make such a successful recovery
Dr. C. R. Carpenter, professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, is investigating why the monkeys don't produce more offspring.
Dr. Carpenter, who has been observing and collecting data on the famed monkey population for 30 years, believes the answer to why the monkeys don't become overabundant may have some bearing on the population dynamics of their most recent relative — man.
The leaf-eating monkeys are surrounded by a lush food supply and have no predatory animals to contend with.
One of Dr. Carpenter's hunches group tensions in densely populated monkey areas might tend to reduce the fertility in females.
"They can be seen frequently coming down with 4-B Syndrome, he said.
Scientists are studying a colony of howler monkeys on the Island of Barro Colorado in the Panama Canal Zone. The colony refuses to let itself become overpopulated, even though the monkeys live in an ideal setting.
Baby Boom Solved By Monkey Colonv
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—(UPI) The monkey may be able to help the newest branch of his family tree with man's most pressing problem—the population explosion.
Sanford described this as bridge, burbon, bon bons and boredom.
from what he branded "the addition of motherhood and housewifery."
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