Rutherford NJ Gamewell Fire Alarm Office

This is the circa 1947 form four, punch register, 6 inch gong in oak case and Digitize system 3000 receiver at the fire alarm off in Rutherford NJ. The box pulled is number 564, it is a master box for town hall.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Gamewell
• digitizer
• Rutherford
• diaphone
• alarm
• Municapale
• punch
• register
• formfour
• form
• four

[FireLiteAlarms]

i dont understand what the point of this system is. please explain it?

[jcityfire]

Threw out town are fire boxes on telephone poles. On some buildings the fire alarm is also connected to a fire box, when the building fire alarm goes off, it transmits the signal threw city owned wires back to the fire alarm office and to the police station to dispatch the FD.

[jcityfire]

As soon as the box starts ringing out an alarm, the dispatch center has it and in dispatching the FD. It is the fastest and most reliably way to transmit an alarm. That is as long as the system is in good working order.

[jcityfire]

The system in the video has 6 city circuits that receive alarms and two alarm circuits that transmits to the PD/ dispatch center and the bells in the fire houses. The Gamewell Diaphone horns have been taken out of services. There are 64 street boxes and 21 master boxes. We are adding master boxes all the time. We use either Digitize or City Master Box boxes now. Once it is installed at the building owners expense the monitoring is free.

[jcityfire]

It is 150 years old technology coupled with 21 century technology. The form four in the video, the big gray thing with all the lights flashing was taken out of services on 3-24-08 and replaced with a modern Digitize form four that was used from Montclare FD. It coast us almost nothing. The old form four was having problems with the relays hanging up.

[jcityfire]

This system is top notch and costs almost nothing to keep going as long as you keep up with the trees and the other utilities that we share the poles with.

[Michaelbos]

Boston still has this system working today, even though there has been attempts to dismantle the fire bio system, stating less boxes are pull and people use hard lines or cell phones. BFD response to this as stated in some comments, next to nothing to run and you can have all electrical power go dead in the city. And if you pull a box in need, it will work.

[Heyde1979]

there are depts in my county that still blow the box numbers others shifted to a coded system like 3 rounds of 5 for a general alarm and 3 rounds of 3 for minor

[xthemwordx]

yeah.

[suzzex]

Wow! Those are loud relays! Nice bells though.

[Heyde1979]

many volunteer fire depts do have the whole dept respond because you dont know if any will get out the call I dont know what the Rutherford fire dept does for general and minor alarms

[3genff]

Listen to the bells. 5 then 6 then 4. You have a board at the station, look for Box 564 and see what the address is. Respond to that location and see what the emergency is. Most stations have a box assignment. Some just dump the house. It could be a hang nail or a job. The element of surprise.

[NipkowDisk]

Cool video! Fircrest School in Shoreline, WA (used to be a Navy hospital in WWII) had an old Gamewell system with keywound everything IIRC. I distinctly remember the punch register being keywound as well. That setup was ANCIENT!