page_title: William Francis Channing
section_title: Fire alarm system
hierarchical_section_title: William Francis Channing / Fire alarm system
caption_attribution_description: English: William Francis Channing (1820-1901) Fire-Alarm System 1852 invention
context_page_description: William Francis Channing was an American activist, electrical researcher, scientist, physician, and inventor. He invented the first citywide electric fire alarm system. Channing worked with Alexander Graham Bell in developing the telephone.
context_section_description: Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1837 and commercial usage was begun in 1844.
  Channing spun off this technology to create a citywide fire alarm system. With the assistance of Professor Farmer, an electrical engineer, they developed a fire-alarm telegraph. They talked the officials of Boston into financing the construction of a citywide fire alarm system. The first central office was located at 21 Court Square. The city owned the building. The system began testing on 28 April 1852. The first fire alert was received the very next night. Channing and Moses obtained a patent on this electrical telegraph system on 19 May 1857. It was US Patent #17,355 and known as the American fire-alarm telegraph or the "city system."
  The object of the fire-alarm system was to give a fast alarm in a city in case of fire. It first gave a signal to the central station of a fire from a local neighborhood. The citywide system was to provide a signaling station near all houses. The central station then had a bell-tower to give an alert by means of a bell that could be heard by many. The central office knew where the local fire was and the public could respond accordingly.
  Channing, being a medical physician, looked at electric wires and the human nervous system as resembling each other. He looked at this first fire-alarm system as merely an application of the fundamentals of self-preservation that is found throughout nature.
caption: Channing's fire-alarm system at Boston's City Hall in 1852
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