Before the widespread availability of cellular phones, or even landline phones, the problem of alerting the fire department to an emergency was solved in many localities by the fire alarm call box, which dates back to the 1850’s. The device was essentially a telegraph sender. When it was pulled, it would encode a message via a rotary sender to headquarters. The message would indicate only that the alarm had been pulled, and the location. Apparently, the call box also had a telegraph key, which would allow responding firefighters or police to call back to the station to request a backup.

It wasn’t until 70 years ago that the system was updated by the addition of a telephone. This photo, from the November 1955 issue of Popular Electronics, shows this young woman calling in an emergency somewhere in Omaha, where the new boxes were being field tested by Bell Labs. They would soon be available in Indianapolis, Miami, Syracuse, and Sioux Falls.

As with the old call boxes, merely lifting the receiver from the hook would flash an alarm signal with location to headquarters. This young woman seems to have her wits about her, but the magazine noted that if the person was too excited to speak, the message would still get through. The operator at headquarters had the ability to transfer the call, such as to police headquarters. The phone would also allow responding police officers or firefighters to call directly to headquarters. Before the days of handheld radios, it wasn’t unusual for cops walking a beat to periodically phone in to the station with one of these.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, there was such a call box located on a utility pole across the street from our house. (We were also across the street from a school, which might have been the reason it was located there, to prevent another tragedy such as the 1958 Our Lady of the Angels fire in which help was delayed due to the lack of a call box. (A passing motorist saw the fire and went to a store to call the fire department, but was initially refused because the phone wasn’t for public use.)

I don’t remember whether the alarm near our house had a phone, or just an alarm to be pulled. I never got a close look at it, because I knew it wasn’t the kind of thing that I should mess with in the absence of a real emergency. False alarms were surprisingly rare. On a handful of occasions, I recall a fire truck showing up, looking around to confirm that there wasn’t any fire, and then resetting the alarm. But that didn’t happen very often.