The Siren Board

Greetings everyone. You might of seen on reddit but I am the owner of a Cosgrave/Codwell siren, the 2nd one known to still exist. One of the people on reddit asked me to join here and post pictures of it.

The siren has not been moved its still sitting behind my station as it has been for 60-80 years as I don't have the manpower and team to safely move it. I WILL be restoring it to working order and I'm already getting the plans in motion for that.

Dude, that's awesome! 2023 is already beginning to turn out better than 2022!

You've found the holy grail. This is a unique siren, which uses a mechanism that raises and lowers the choppers, allowing it to send clean coded pulses. As far as I know, we have not actually had a look at how this mechanism operates. Massive siren, hoping for an easy restoration. What region did this siren come from?

This is actually the third to have been photographed as far as I know, the second was in Parkersburg, PA and is no longer there, pictured below.

If I have decoded the Serial numbers correctly, Jerome AZ is Series 100, S/N 105. I believe this decodes to Series 1 #5. But I could be wrong. I am curious if this unit has a tag anywhere?

This really has me wondering if any more of these are out there.

Parkersburg:

I understand I don't have much info to give here but here is another Cosgrave photo that not many people may know about. It's in Oconomowoc, WI

Synther wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:09 pm

You've found the holy grail. This is a unique siren, which uses a mechanism that raises and lowers the choppers, allowing it to send clean coded pulses. As far as I know, we have not actually had a look at how this mechanism operates. Massive siren, hoping for an easy restoration. What region did this siren come from?

This is in southern NH. I have no doubt this siren was used by my fire station years ago as it's in what I'm calling our scrap pile. The mechanism works akin to a starter motor. The spinning motion caused by the motor lifts the rotors up to sound them and then when speed decreases it goes down. This is dampened by oil in the threads. The patent describes this on i believe the third page. Its how the coding mechanisms works.

It might not be the actual 2nd known Cosgrave, but this is awesome. More so since you're restoring it

LukeH wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:39 pm

This is actually the third to have been photographed as far as I know, the second was in Parkersburg, PA and is no longer there, pictured below.

If I have decoded the Serial numbers correctly, Jerome AZ is Series 100, S/N 105. I believe this decodes to Series 1 #5. But I could be wrong. I am curious if this unit has a tag anywhere?

This really has me wondering if any more of these are out there.

Parkersburg:

FB_IMG_1675900874230.jpg

You're right about the picture I was just going off 2nd still in existence. My guess is most are sitting in old rural departments that got big station hand me downs. I found even old hose from the 80s in that pile.

WillamsH28 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 09, 2023 8:22 pm

It might not be the actual 2nd known Cosgrave, but this is awesome. More so since you're restoring it

It probably isn't but to my knowledge it's the only other one that we have current physical evidence of. I hope we can find more out there and this encourages a renaissance/big hunt.

WillamsH28 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 09, 2023 8:22 pm

It might not be the actual 2nd known Cosgrave, but this is awesome. More so since you're restoring it

It probably isn't, there are likely many more we know about, but they sure are the first one known to own one.

I think.