150 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



The occurrence of a fire in a city is one of the exigencies In which 

 rapid and intelh'gent co-operation is necessary between the members of 

 the municipal body. As our warehouses, manufactories, and public 

 buildings are constructed, the extent of a conflagration depends to a 

 great extent upon whether it is reached by the fire department within a 

 short time or not. The first ten minutes in directing the alarm is 

 worth hours afterwards. In organizing a system of fire alarms it be- 

 comes, therefore, necessary that every locality in a city shall have the 

 means in its immediate neighborhood of notifying the existence of a fire. 

 In order that this may be done systematically and under organic direc- 

 tion, it is necessary that this notification should be sent, in the first in- 

 stance, to a common centre, which will naturally be at the city hall; 

 and it is further necessary that the means should exist of giving thence 

 an instantaneous, definite, and fuhl'ic alarm of fire. 



The first requisite for a fire telegraph is certainly in its means of 

 communication. What, then, are the safeguards of the municipal tele- 

 graph by which its indications may be made always reliable, and by 

 which interruption, by accident or design, maybe rendered improbable 

 or impossible ? These are the use of strong well-insulated wires, car- 

 ried over the houses and attached to lofty and well selected buildings ; 

 the use of duplicate wires, following different routes, between all the 

 stations, so that if one wire is broken from any cause, another and dis- 

 tant wire may still continue the circuit; and the dispensing entirely 

 with the use of the ground as any part of the circuit, as used in com- 

 mon telegraph lines. Instead, also, of using, in a municipal t'elegraph, 

 one great circuit which should traverse a whole city, a number of lesser 

 circuits may be used, radiating from the centre, like the petals of a 

 flower; so that if one circuit should be interrupted, all the others would 

 still be intact and operative. These safeguards prove sufficient in 

 practice to make the municipal telegraph the most certain means of 

 communication which has yet been devised, under all conditions of 

 weather and season. 



In June, 1845, nearly ten years ago, I first published a notice of the 

 fire-alarm telegraph, involving, essentially, the principles and safe- 

 guards upon which it bas since been constructed. No definite action 

 was taken upon it until 1848, when the subject was brought before the 

 city government of Boston by the mayor, and two machines for striking 

 the city bells from a distance, by means of the telegraph, were con- 

 structed under direction of Moses G. Farmer, esq., one of the ablest 

 and most ingenious telegraphic engineers in the country.* One of 

 these machines was placed in the belfry of the Boston city hall and 

 connected with the line of telegraph extending to New York. Under 

 these circumstances the operator in New York, by tapping on his finger- 

 key, struck the bell on the city hall a number of times, and, according 

 to the newspapers of that day, thus originated a false alarm of fire in 

 Boston. Tliis was the first illustration of the capacities of the fire- 

 alarm telegraph. 



The matter slept, however, till 1851, wlien I brought the system 



* These original machines were exhibited, with otiier apparatus, in delivering this lecture ; 

 but for the sake of connexion, reference to the experimental illustrations will be excluded 

 from this written report. 



