A Brief History Of Burglar Alarms
In this article we will take a brief look at the history of burglar alarms and how they work. Previously before the invention of the burglar alarm the only way that people could tell if an intruder had gained access to their property was either by them being alerted to the fact by others or by their dogs barking. Unfortunately, there were the face to face encounters as well. To provide some type of warning, some people would use bells attached to doors and windows and these would ring when they were opened. Others would rely on old tin cans tied together with string and then placed across a pathway. If available, geese made great alarm systems as well.
However one day someone came up with the idea of placing a bell within a metal enclosure and then using 4 lantern batteries they attached to it using a relay. This was then mounted on to the outside of a building. Then leading from the box were some wires which one was connected to the door and one to a switch which would then arm and disarm the system. Today this type of alarm system is more commonly known as a local bell. Maintaining this system was pretty easy. As soon as the bell began to ring less enthusiastically, the property owner knew it was time to change the batteries inside.
As the years went by someone then came up with the idea of putting a set of wires from the premises being protected to be connected to their local police station by the use of telephone lines. The biggest problem with these particular systems is that a lot of phone lines were required. Also the police were forever being sent out on wild goose chases because of so many false alarms were being caused.
Eventually a much more technological sophisticated system was produced based on the one mentioned above. Iinstead of wires being directly sent from the property to the police station, the phone companies began to run pairs of wires to a central location and this then allowed them to have multiple premises to be wired in a series to the main feed. This main feed was then routed through to a secure location and became the monitoring service. Each premise had a wheel with spokes on it which would open and close contacts as it turned and this in turn would send a Morse code like pulse to the monitoring center. These pulses would then cause the probes at the center to release ink onto paper and when these lines were counted it would identify which premise it was. As you can see from the brief history of burglar alarms that we have provided to you above with the invention of computers and the internet the technology used today is well advanced compared to its predecessors.
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