The Siren Board

NanSiren wrote:

Jim_Ferer wrote:Daniel is right. for anyone old enough to be dragged by their moms to the department store in the old days, these chimes were how managers got paged.

Actually the Sears in Burnsville Center (Burnsville, MN) still has an 850Hz. electronic chime tone that would be broadcast over the speakers.

Update - Also the Sears in Rochester, MN has a beep tone that serves the same purpose.

I have more to report!

This is Kutz Hall:




Notice that it looks like it should have an all-glass exterior, what with all the panels, but most of them are blacked out? And notice the steps to the door that no longer exists? Kutz was built in 1960 to serve as the dining hall to a brand new dormitory quad. At the time, the only other dining hall was way on the other end of campus, near a different dormitory quad built about 3-5 years before. About 10 years later, the enormous Usdan Student Center was built nearby, rendering Kutz obsolete. And so Kutz was, in the 70's or 80's, rather awkwardly converted to house classrooms and offices. And that's when these came in:








I've never seen anything exactly like them before, or anywhere else on campus. A new system was installed in the building sometime in the past few years, but these may still work. Has anyone else ever seen these before?

the alarms are classics. They're Standard horn/lights (as in incandesent light). The horn behind the grill from what I've been told makes a mid toned buzz. The pulls are made by Johnson Controls. If they ever take those horn/lights down, please grab one for me.

Thanks for the info. Remember, I'm on the good side of the head of public safety ever since I asked about the siren system during orientation, so I suppose I do stand a chance at getting them, though I might have a bit of difficulty getting them to you...