FireNews.net

Waxing Nostalgic for Old Warning Lights

I really, really wish I would have invented LED lights.

Just about every piece of new emergency apparatus is specified with them. Older units are being retrofitted with them at an alarming pace.

Any volunteer worth his pickup truck is loaded down with them.

Some guys even hang them from their turnouts. They are in hand-lights, there when you open compartments, even appearing on helmet brims.

That would have been really sweet.

I’m not only a fire buff, or just an apparatus buff. I guess one of the buffing areas I “specialize” in is emergency lighting. Can you minor in such a class at Fire Buff University?

I’m old enough to remember when the average fire truck had about five warning lights on it: two on the front, two on the rear, and a gumball on the roof. And they were all red. The ones on the front and rear blinked (slowly). The one on the top rotated.

Fire trucks were all red and life was simple. This low tech solution seemed to satisfy our need for something bright and flashy.

I grew up in Fayetteville. We had five stations, eventually six. In the 1970’s, Fayetteville started ordering their American LaFrance’s with a clear lense Federal gumball. Two beams red, two clear. That was the beginning of seeing what a difference one small change could make.

Electronic sirens were added, but this article is about the lights.

I think the next technological leap was on the Platoon Commander’s car, a lime-yellow Dodge. Car 4. It had a Federal Twinsonic. Oooooooh.

We had all see one on television, on Squad 51. Now we had one of our own. Were we really as fancy as California?

LaFayette Village, County Station 7 purchased an International cab engine with a super-special breed of light: a Twinsonic built to California specifications. It had a steady burning front red light, and a flashing rear amber light on the left. I never did hear how that ended up on a truck in North Carolina, but on a scene, you could clearly see what a difference the change made.

Years later, the county ambulance service received a shipment of ambulances with a new animal: strobes. It took a little while to figure out what we were looking at, but we knew is was something new and very flashy.

For the next twenty years or so, technology pretty much stayed the same. A few extra colors started appearing (clear, and some amber), but for the most part, most lights flashed, rotators rotated and the occasional strobe would double flash. Regan was in office, and there was no need to make major leaps forward, thank you.

I still remember walking the dog (Daisy Mae the Dalmatian, of course) sometime in the late 1990’s. A Federal Express truck was making a delivery on our street, and the driver had his emergency flashers on. But something was different. Very different.

As we passed the truck, the light pulsed on and then cleanly off. There was no time when it was in between being on and being off. What was creating this illusion?

The answer was a round LED, outfitted for commercial vehicles.

It would still be a few years before emergency services started using LEDs in lightheads and lightbars.

But by the time I saw the Fed Ex truck, I had already missed the boat and didn’t even know it.

So there we have it. Need a light: specify LED.

But maybe not.

It’s too early to declare a trend, but I’ve noticed something different with recent deliveries around the country.

Columbus, Ohio has received a big shipment of new engines from Ferrara. Instead of LED lightbars, they specified three Code 3 XL lightbars on the cab, and two on the rear.

In California, Los Angeles County only uses lightbars from Code 3, specifying the MX 7000.

Los Angeles is also holding out with rotating lights, also specifying the MX 7000 with LED lightheads in the bottom tier.

And FDNY, which truly writes a custom spec, has gone away from Whelen Edge lightbars to what appears to be Federal AeroDynic lightbars with rotating lights and LED light heads.

Maybe it’s just like a NFL team wearing a retro jersey, just temporary, a simple anomaly.

I know there are power and maintenance issues involved with non-LED lights, but the way we fuss over our apparatus in this country, is changing a bulb that big of a deal?

It will be interesting to watch and see what the next great technological evolution in emergency lighting will be.

Now that’s what I hope I end up inventing next.

Photo Credits:
Columbus Ohio: Box 15 Club Flickr Site
Los Angeles County: www.massfiretrucks.com
Los Angeles Fire Department: So Cal Metro Flickr Site
FDNY Seagrave: Photo by John A. Calderone, Fire Apparatus Journal

A very long comment was moved here --- >

Here’s an article that shows where it all began:

chicagotribune.com

Earl Gosswiller, 1912-2009: Engineer, prolific inventor
Helped design squad car lights, tornado sirens

By Trevor Jensen
Tribune reporter

January 7, 2009
Anyone who has been jolted by a whirring police light in his or her rearview mirror can thank Earl Gosswiller, an inveterate tinkerer whose creations included the Federal Signal Beacon Ray, believed to be the first rotating light for the top of squad cars.

Mr. Gosswiller, 96, died of complications from pneumonia on Saturday, Jan. 3, in Cordia Senior Residence in Westmont, his home of four years, said his son-in-law Bruce Broberg.

Mr. Gosswiller, who worked at Federal Signal for almost 40 years, has his name on 29 U.S. patents, said John Segvich, a spokesman for the Oak Brook maker of safety equipment.

“He’s considered the father of engineering at Federal Signal,” Segvich said.

The Beacon Ray was one of his early inventions. According to Broberg, Mr. Gosswiller came up with the idea after looking at a rotating siren attached to a firetruck. He hooked up four sealed beams to a fixture that rotated horizontally, then capped it with a colored lens.

Mr. Gosswiller and his team advanced the idea with more sophisticated light bars like the Federal Signal Twin Sonic, which use multiple lights and in some cases mirrors to amplify the effect.

“What you don’t want to see in your rearview mirror, that’s Earl’s work,” said Andy Kunz, vice president of operations for the mobile systems group at Federal Signal.

Mr. Gosswiller also invented and refined several lines of sirens that warn of tornadoes or other potential disasters.

His creativity didn’t stop when he left the job. Awake late one night, he came up with a way to increase the sweet spot on his wooden tennis racket by lining its frame with lead weights, his son-in-law said. The reworked racket made him an even more formidable player in the days before oversize frames.

Mr. Gosswiller graduated from Highland Park High School and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Armour Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology.

He took a job with a company that made pinball machines, and helped develop the bumpers that push out the ball in an explosion of light, his son-in-law said.

During World War II, he helped develop a training aid for fighter pilots, using film to show exactly how far ahead of a moving enemy plane they had to fire their missiles to score a hit.

Mr. Gosswiller, who lived for many years in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, was a scratch golfer, at one time had a 190 average in bowling and competed in national club tournaments in tennis.

He retired from Federal Signal in 1982 as vice president of engineering of the signal division, but continued to work as a consultant for several years. Younger engineers looked up to the prolific inventor, who defied some of that profession’s stereotypes.

“He wasn’t a mad scientist. He was a regular guy,” Kunz said.

Mr. Gosswiller’s wife, Nancy, died in 1999. Survivors include a daughter, Sue Broberg; a sister, Berenice Fox; four grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

Services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday in Cordia Senior Residence, 865 N. Cass Ave., Westmont.

Copied from the original undated article, which is too worn to risk posting. I regret that I don’t have the diagram which shows the housing mentioned in this article.

“As with many other inventions, the revolving warning light so widely used on emergency vehicles began as something else.
“In 1945, sirens, some with a forward-shining light, were considered the ultimate in emergency vehicle warning systems. One of their major flaws, especially in northern climes, was that the rotor could not overcome accumulations of ice and snow, and the rotor could not overcome accumulations of ice and snow, and would freeze. Mr. Earl Gosswiller, an engineer at the then-Federal Electric Co., believed the problem could be solved with a bell-shaped housing placed over the siren in an inverted position within a metal housing with an opening at the bottom, which allowed the sound to be transmitted.
“The next problem was to incorporate a flashing light into the water-resistant siren. Mr. Gosswiller developed a rotating bell-shaped housing which had two automotive spotlights inside. The rotating lamps gave a flashing signal in all directions, like a lighthouse, rather than just a single flashing light pointed in one direction, but the idea was not well-received and the whole concept sat dormant.
“Mr. Gosswiller knew the idea was good, and he set out to prove it. About a year later, a prototype of the revolving emergency signal, called the Model 17 Beacon Ray, was finished. It was readily accepted when introduced in 1948. With minor modifications, it is still being sold today.
“Its success is due to eighty ‘explosive’ flashes per minute, an electrifying high-intensity, short-duration flash not approached by common flashing signals.
“In 1961 Mr. Gosswiller conceived the idea of mounting an electronic siren speaker in the center of a bar and a rotating light at each end of the bar. This arrangement permitted 360-degree coverage by the lights with no blockage by the speaker, allowed unobstructed sound from the speaker, and the entire assembly could be clamped to a vehicle’s drip rail without drilling holes. The Federal Model 11 Twin Beacon Ray was developed from this concept, and introduced in 1962.
“Mr. Gosswiller noticed that some of the light at the end of the bar was randomly reflected from the chrome-plated center-mounted speaker. In 1967 he devised a set of mirrors, arranged along a parabolic curve, to reflect the wasted light toward the front or rear of the vehicle. A plastic housing was designed to protect the mirrors from weather and dirt. This light bar, the Model 12 TwinSonic, was introduced in 1968 as the first enclosed light/sound system.
“In the mid-70’s, fuel shortages and rapidly rising fuel costs resulted in aerodynamic tests being conducted on lightbar-equipped vehicles. These bars caused considerable drag and increased fuel consumption. In 1977, Federal introduced the Model 24 AeroDynic light/sound system. It was the first streamlined lightbar with a substantial reduction in drag over the previous square, box-like shapes.
“In closing, it all started in a Chicago snowstorm with a better way to keep the old mechanical siren from freezing. Today, the vehicular revolving light is used on every continent.
“As for Mr. Gosswiller, he received a BSME degree from Armour Institute of Technology (predecessor to Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1934. He joined Federal Electric Company in 1943, and was a project engineer, chief engineer, vice president of engineering, and vice president of advanced engineering. He holds numerous patents in the visual and audible signaling field.”

Comment by fyrboy on Fri Jan 09 at 09:53
Article: 20090106 Blog: Inventing the Next Great Light

Posted on Tue Jan 06 2009 at 23:11

Send to a Friend

Back to the Editor's Blog

Reader Comments:

Enter your comments on this article

Fri Jul 10 at 02:52

Related Links

Waxing Nostalgic for Old Warning Lights