The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-10-06

accommodate all the people who wanted a
restful ride. Soft rubber seats in the aisles
and on the steps of the car would add to
the comfort and safety of passengers. On
the steps, besides acting as insulators they
may save many accidents by keeping the
feet OF passengers from slipping. Another
idea of Mr.. Bain's is to connect every
piece OF metalwork of car to the ground,
especially the hand and guard rails. If a
small copper wire be run from such metal
pieces, connected with some portion of the
trucks and made of the same potential as
the ground, no passenger getting on and
off the car can receive shock in any kind
of weather. The car conductor should be
supplied with some means of communi-
eating with the power-house in case of ac-
cident or trouble. The easiest way to do
this is to run telephone line on the poles
to the terminus of the line and to several
intermediate points. Telephones are now
$40 or So. Another thing that street-rail-
way men do not realize the value of is a
battery OF accumulators. Placed near a
heavy grade they will save copper in
line. as well as time; they will save the
burning out OF armature in elm bling the
gradient; they will prevent shocks to the
machinery by equalizing the load, and
they can be used to run the "owp' car after
the dynamos and engines have been shut
down at night.
PNEUMATIC F1RE-ALARM TELEGRAPH SYs-
TEM.-A new mechanical and pneumatic
tire-alarm system has been put upon the
market, which embodles a magneto-elec-
trio machine for the transmission of a
Geographic alarm to the fire department
headquarters. In this system the raising
of the temperature of any room above the
normal is instantly indicated both within
the house and at the fire station. The
system consists essentially of three parts,
viz: a thermostat, which acts under the
influence of the heated air; an annun-
ciator, which receives the alarm from the
detector or thermostat and indicates it by
visual room or floor signal and the ringing
OF bell; and transmitter, which is also
actuated by the thermostat and transmits
the alarm by wire to a predetermined sta
ton. All these are connected by closed
pipes within the building. The annun-
clator has many duties to perform. In the
first place as soon as 1T receives the alarm
from the thermostat its clockwork releases
vibrating lever which sounds a gong.
1t also controls a number of bellows
connected to their respective pipes,
which when actuated by an impulse of air
from the detector drop a shutter and re-
lease the clockwork, thus ringing the local
alarm and virtually indicating the location
OF the fire. In other words, the location of
the fire is Immediately made known to the
occupant of every room in the building
The local alarm runs for about fifteen min
utes. 1t Is located, preferably. just inside
the main entrance of the building. The
transmitter, besides sending the alarm to
the fire station, is connected up with the
central exchange of the local telephone
company, so that if the residents of the
house in which fire breaks out happens
to be out of town, they may, by previous
arrangement, be promptly apprised of the
fact by telephone.