The Siren Board

Got this for $30 at a local shop. It was supposedly made in 1948. All I was told is that it came from a decomm'd DeKalb County fire station that was demolished around 1987. It still works, the owner of the shop actually let me fire it up for 5 seconds.

Other than what I said, anyone know anything about these?

I love these. These were comonly used in old faraday systems. This alarm shood run off 120v.

I have 2 of them, one 110 volt and the other 12 volt. Check the tag to make sure it's 110 volts. If it just says 12 or 11f (like my 12 volt horn) you'll need a 12 volt transformer to run it properly. If you're not sure take a pic of the tag. it should sound like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMChwc0inHA

And should be quite loud.

These are actually relabeled Benjamin horns who produced horns mainly for other manufactures, especially IBM and later Simplex when they bought out IBM's fire alarm and time clock line. I believe were produced in the 1930's as by the 40's they were redesigned and sounded like the Family Feud strike buzzer.

Looks like your horn was repainted at some point. But the good news is they require no maintenance other than an occasional test blast and are easy to fix if on the off chance something does bad or breaks.