The municipal telegraph network: origins of the fire and police alarm systems in American cities

摘要

Joel A. TARR, The Municipal Telegraph Network: Origins of the Fire and Police Alarm Systems in American Cities. The municipal telegraph is one of the technologies that constituted the infrastructure of the emerging networked city in the second half of the nineteenth century. As a communications improvement, it helped in overcoming the city's fragmentation and aided the municipality in dealing with crises of fire and social order. Municipal adoption of a fire alarm telegraphic system was often related to fire department reorganization in a centralized and bureaucatic direction. , "he fire-alarm telegraph not only improved the ability of the municipal government to fight fires but helped reinforce bureaucratic control over the firemen. Large cities adopted the new technology at a rapid rate. In contrast to the fire alarm telegraph, municipal adoption of the police telegraph was relatively slow. This reflected not only a slower pace in municipal bureaucratization of police functions but also the different nature of these functions compared to fire fighting. Police, in contrast to firemen, were likely to encounter a variety of situations calling for responses not communicable by a single signaling mechanism. In addition, the telegraph was limited as a device to enforce more bureaucratic control over the beat patrolman - a deficiency corrected by adding a telephone to the police call box. These cases suggest that the city presented a different context for technology adoption compared to the private market and that only powerful social and political pressure could compel the adoption of the new systems required to modernize city service delivery.