Old Siemens alarm bell from Germany

[Daniel]

At the Gymnasium (prep high school) I attended in Germany in 1989, there was one of these unusual bells on the old building. It never rang, since the school used electronic chimes and the old bells were disconnected. I found this one on Ebay from a dealer in Munich and received it today.

It is a Siemens alarm bell with a dual "fail safe" (Sicherheitsschaltung) circuit. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it rings loudly on 12VAC. The gongs are the old cowbell shape common on European alarm bells from the WWII era and earlier, but unlike a dull-sounding U.S. Navy cowbell alarm, this has a nice, low pitch with a long resonance. I don't know how old this is. I'll make a sound recording later.

The label translates to "alternating current alarm bell with fail-safe circuit" and the red thing is a cigar lighter to show the size of this thing. At the top of the contact board is a jumper (has two screws and rounded sides) that can be moved to the two holes below it. Perhaps one of our German board members knows about these bells.

[CABLEVision]

Nice find, your lucky you can speak German so fluently.
These are the same type used in German parking structures to let people know a vehicle is departing, correct?
I wonder if they use federal APD products in Germany?

[Daniel]

Nice find, your lucky you can speak German so fluently.
These are the same type used in German parking structures to let people know a vehicle is departing, correct?
I wonder if they use federal APD products in Germany?

My German has sadly deteriorated. The last time I was there, there were men in phallic helmets and Nazi-green uniforms goosestepping in East Berlin. A hardware store in Ulm had for sale small doorbells with cone-shaped gongs, and I saw small ones in East Germany, but the only newer alarm bells I saw there had the dome-shaped gongs like American bells. I don't know what they use in parking garages.

[Niklas]

Hi.
Could you send me a bigger fotograph of the wiring instructions, plaese?
It seems to me that this bell is used to run on 60V (telephone network).
Within a week or two i'll get back my book of nearly all alarm equipment of the 30's, and i think it will be possible then, to get some better information about your bell.

[Daniel]

Here is an image from the Ebay seller, but it isn't very clear. I'll take a better photo later. The schematic in this photo is T-shaped, with the white and green leads connected to the "cross bar" of the T and the red lead connected to the bottom of the T. There is a 1 ?f capacitor in line with the coils if the red lead is used. This rings loudly on 12 volts AC with the white and green leads, but it looks like it was designed for a dual voltage system. Any idea how old it is? It is a beautiful piece of classic German engineering, with fully positionable gongs and mounting arms. Since they strike alternately, it has a much faster-sounding ring than modern bells, plus a deeper tone.

The large type on the label reads "Wechselstrom-Alarmwecker mit Sicherheitsschaltung," but no voltage is listed. If it were American and had this type of wiring diagram, I would assume that it was an extension ringer for a telephone system. Our telephones ring at 90 volts and 20 Hz. "Wechselstrom-Alarmwecker" (AC alarm-giver) suggests that it is not a phone bell, and type of wire attached to the terminals is called "bell wire" in America, which is used for low voltage applications like doorbells and thermostats. "Sicherheitsschaltung" (fail-safe circuit or literally "security switching") implies that it might be a fire alarm or have some hospital or military use.

[Franz?]

90% certain it's what would be called a Type A ringer in US telephone parlance.

Generally used to provide a ringer in an institutional hallway

[Daniel]

Here's a quick sound file. Sorry about the cutoff.

http://media.putfile.com/Siemens-alarm-bell

[Franz?]

Definitely phone.

The cap allows the ringer to sit across a DC line without putting the line into HOLD.

Google has multiple references to this system.

The ringer will operate from either Tip or Ring to Ground, or cross line, giving it multiple capabilitys.

Tip to ground or Ring to ground might produce different sounds.

Fortunately, it isn't a frequency sensitive ringer, so it will operate on 60~.

[Niklas]

Fm wck. = Fermeldewecker = telephone/telegraph bell

In general Siemens used the abbreviation Fm for everything that dealt with telecommunication.

[Daniel]

Vielen dank f?r deine Hilfe! Since the German telephone system has a ringing voltage of 60 volts and the American system uses 90 volts, I could probably use it as a phone ringer; however, 12-24 VAC will give a loud ring for an alarm bell. My guess is that the bell was made somewhere between 1940-1960, but it may be newer or older.