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Back In The Day
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Fireyladd - Retired Chief Sharp on
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Before my day EJ.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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You should ask Greenman or Oldman. They are all knowing.
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Permalink Reply by William Bills on
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I can remember in our town, "way back when" the guys in our department had what they still refer to as "the bell system." All of the firefighters had bells in their houses. They were hard wired to phone lines I believe and would ring when the dispatch office dialed the approriate number or code. This of course was well before pagers or anything like that. There are a few guys in the department that still have them in their homes the last I knew. I am unaware of the speaker type system though.
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Permalink Reply by Greenman on
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Thanks, Capt Busy, but I am certainly NOT all knowing.
I am good at analysis and deduction and I speculate that if the house was close to the fire station then it was just a speaker spliced into the station speakers; or, perhaps it was plugged into a scanner (like the speaker in my garage is).
Just me spit-balling...
Greenman
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Permalink Reply by E.J. on
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It could have been a bell or it looked similar to a speaker but really only had a bell behind it. Thanks for your input.
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It could have been a bell or it looked similar to a speaker but really only had a bell behind it. Thanks everyone for your input.
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Permalink Reply by Ron King (Fire Chief) on
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E J, They were called Plectron"s. It was a specialized VHF/UHF single-channel emergeny alerting radio receiver. The units we had at our Department were VHF 39.5000 mhz. They were about 12' by 12' and had a large speaker in the front about 6" they had a range of two miles. If you were not at home you would miss the call. This was in the 1950's til late 1960's in our area. We still have a few.( not in use) There was no way to sleep when they went off. The good old day's!
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Permalink Reply by James Burton (Jamie) on
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I still have a Plectron in my house, it was passed onto my Wife by one of our retired guys, the things great, loud as hell...Chief King's description is correct, mine also has Volume and Sqeulch, knobs, It blinks a red light once its gone off, which is kinda nice if you are out of the area, and the pager does not work, you know you had a call..
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Hey G-Man... Sounds like our systems were probably the same thing. I can remember my father's bell, and my uncles' as well. I was a kid then. We still have a compressed air horn for the fire alarm. It has two different codes based on the nature of the call will dictate which code is used; three for EMS, five for fire and rescue. Of course we now have pagers as well as text messaging. I wish I could find one of the bells to hang in my house just for collection sake.
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WOW! That would be fantastic! Thank you very much! I enjoy firefighting history as well, and when the topic or items can be related to my dpet. (like you with yours) it makes things so much more meaningful and special. You are so right about the irony of technology; the means stay so similar, yet the modes are WORLD's apart.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Weber on
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All we had was a siren.Then we added the Plectrons.Ours were red with volume and squelch controls.Now we have the pagers and cell phones and all that other assorted stuff.Siren still blows though and thats great.Gotta have a small connection to the past.
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