The Gamewell Corporation of Newton, MA

The Gamewell Co.

I was at the Standard Hose firehouse in Greenport, NY yesterday having a little celebration for a couple fellows who had been volunteer firemen in the village for 50 years.  For those of us who don't volunteer to take out the trash on a weekly basis, 600 months is out of the realm.

On the wall, near my seat and the door was this:

Likely before 1910 or between the 1860s and 1910 there were little fire alarm boxes that looked like this:

So I've been reading about the Gamewell Company, their 95% share of fire alarm systems in hundreds of cities and how the whole thing tied together.  This was of course before phones and a fella named Gamewell from Camden, S.C., bought up the patent rights to a telegraph station/fire alarm device.   How it worked was that you opened the door to the alarm telegraph station above, turned a crank and automatically the "location key or code" for the firebox was transmitted to the alarm box receiver in the fire station that you see 2 images above.  A little piece of paper came off the roller and ran though a device that stamped the location of the box and away you went.

Well, let me tell you, I think the entire thing, this enterprise of fire alarms spread out all over town connected to the firestation with telegraph lines, a pre-programmed code at each box and a big sign on the wall that gave the location of the box code that printed out on the roll of paper...well.....

50 years ago was 1967. I was two years into college..my dad was about 50 at that time and stretched end to end didn't predate that little box thing on the wall of the firehouse.