First Fire Alarm System

 

Ben Putnam was born, October 29, 1915 at El Campo and came to Southwestern Junior College in 1930 when he was 14 years old. He worked as head of maintenance for 16 years.

 

In 1952, he began working for Bascom Church Furniture Co. At that time, he took the title of Putnum Service. This allowed him to purchase electrical equipment as a dealer. He then used it to improve Bascom’s overloaded wiring system. That same year he served as the consultant for the wiring and heating system for the new girl’s dormitory, Hamilton Hall.

 

About that time, Mr. Putnam noticed that just about every thing in Keene that caught on fire burned up. The town had no fire fighting equipment.  He and W.O. Belz went to Fort worth and bought a white panel-style Ford that had a 1,000 gallon tank inside. Mr. Putnam mounted a pump underneath the truck and attached a power takeoff to it. For several years he worked to improve the town’s fire fighting equipment.

 

However, the town had no telephone system, therefore had no real method to sound a fire alarm. To remedy the situation, he went around town and collected about 20 alarm clocks. He put on each clock a metal wheel with notches cut into it which were distinctive to that clock. He then placed each clock into a wooden box with a glass front and from that box he ran a wire on telephone poles to a central location in the old pump house on the campus of Southwestern Junior College. The motor from an old Victrola provided the power for a pencil to mark a code on a moving ribbon paper. When someone broke the glass on the alarm box, the wheel on the clock began to turn and its notches told the pencil the code it should mark on the ribbon of paper.


On top of the water tower stood a red light which blinked according to the code. The town had been divided into sections so the blinking red light or the code on the paper allowed fire fighters to pinpoint the fire.  Volunteers provided all the work needed to set up this ingenious system.

 

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