The Siren Board

What is "wns"? I speak German, Spanish, and English, but I don't know that one.

...referring to towns = to.wns in Europe ...
I'm envious of your trilingualism.

The Codewell is very interesting...it was the only siren ever made with three rotors and three individual motors for each rotor. The timer that came with it could be set to activate the individual motors at different intervals, producing a very wide variety of signals. Too bad it was a failure on the market.

So, it was three "sirens", each with a rotor powered by it's own motor?

Did it have dampers to sound and silence tones atheir peak steady frequencies?

I can imagine it failed; anything more complicated than three signals is beyond my understanding.

The only Codewells I've seen photos of are from old ads showing a long-shafted motor with upright mounts on which to stack rotors. They all looked to have the same number of ports and there was only one motor at the bottom. Douro -- do you have a photo or sketch of this siren? Is it all in one housing? Were the port ratios close together (i.e. 8/10/12) or far apart like the old German dual-motor sirens (i.e. 3/9)?

Regarding towns in the US or Europe, either place could use this distinctive signal for something. Never having used a Belgian commode, I can only surmise that the ridge in the center is designed to be something like a log splitter. It's no telling what those crazy Belch had in mind . . . I do remember the distinctive feel of East German toilet paper, though. Uncomfortable, but efficient.

3/9? Interesting. An octave and 5th apart?

Don'the rotor chambers always match the number of stator ports?

Those toilets had a flat surface "plateau".
Maybe there was a 1/4 inch shallow depression in the top of the plateau.

When flushed, everything was washed forward and down a descending chute which contained the water trap to maintain a seal from sewer gasses.

If water remained in the shallow plateau pool, it soon evaporated.

I don't understand this design.

But an older woman claims this design saved her life.
It enabled her tobserve blood.
She called her MD. Was found to have colon cancer which was removed in time.

That's disgusting. I didn't need to know that.

Those old German sirens were not sounded together. The low tone was for fire calls and the high tone (same as today's E-57 sound) was for civil defense. Most had two motors, but some had one motor and two clutches.

Don't have a sketch, but there is an old ad floating around somewere for it.

I've been reading these forums casually for a long time now... I don't think I'd collect sirens, but I find them very interesting... I'll be making a post on the board about my stuff in general, but this one is specifically about the triple-tone siren in Jerome, AZ. I saw this siren on a trip there... The first thing that popped into my head was "I gotta ask someone on the siren boards about this, I've never seen one like it. Wonder what it is?" So here's a basic description...

This thing had a cylindrical body, with stacked rotors/stators covered by a cylinder of mesh. It then had a base which I think was cyindrical, on slightly splayed legs. Sitting atop the rotor stack was a wide, snallow conical cap. From where base met rotor stack, up to the outer edge of the conical cap, was a wide cone of finer mesh. And the whole thing, though a bit rusty and bent-up, seemed to have been painted red. It was on a four-legged tower that had the control box (NOT a blower) mounted on the inside of one of the crossbars. The platform that holds the siren has a hole cut in the bottom, and two conduits go up to it, one through the platform and one through the hole. The platform has a sort of gate around it, even though it's too small for anyone to stand on it. There's also a new-looking antenna poking straight up from the tower, going past the siren and a good distance higher.

I'm sorry that I have no way to post a photo, but if someone here can and will post it, my email is [email protected]. If someone drops me a note, I'll send you the shot I snapped with my digital camera. It's not as good as it could have been, but it's a fair picture of a neat siren.

Use Photobucket, it's a free online photo hosting service.

http://www.photobucket.com.

Just copy and paste the [IMG] tagged URL into a post and your done.