Disc dialler disaster

All my life I have been browned off BY the older generation telling me we how hard it was in the old days and how we have never had it so good (Where have I heard that before?). It comes as something of a shock to wake up one day and realise that in a few short months I will hit 60 years of age and I am now that older generation telling the "young-uns" how hard it was in my day Blah Blah Blah!

OK, I admit, I am as guilty as the next bloke. The older generation have a moral duty to pass on their well-earned knowledge to the younger lads, but it has to be done with a modicum of respect on both sides. In other words I have to try NOT to ram it down the throats of the next generation and the younger ones in turn need to listen to what the older lads have to say. They have to take on board the facts then decide which bits are valuable and which bits they can throw away as out of date.

Each generation has worked hard to make life better for the next, but we really must try to pass that knowledge on without making the next generation feel guilty, or that they owe us something for it, or that they have to bow and scrape and say "thank you sir" for every morsel we throw their way.

No, it is our duty to tell them all we know. They in turn will forge ahead and make a whole new world for the generation that will follow them.

Old dog has to learn some new tricks
We on the other hand need to let them get on with it, we need to be there when they falter with guidance and wisdom and we need to learn when to stand back or get trampled in the rush. The old dog HAS to learn a few new tricks and these are usually how to keep out from under the feet of the next generation.

At this stage you may be wondering what brought on this attack of nostalgia? The Christmas booze may have had a lot to do with it but, in reality, I was mulling over writing an article on false alarms and it got me thinking we have come a long long way even in my short years in the trade and it is worth having a look back – if nothing else it's a good laugh.

In the early days it was only the banks and the military establishments that could afford to have direct police response. They did it by having a direct line into the local police station, and it was as crude as that. A pair of wires was connected to the intruder alarm at one end and a bell in the police station at the other. Post Office Telephones (as they were known in those days) would literally run out a pair of wires often to the next town – the price of course was a king's ransom.

Then someone had a brilliant idea, why not use the 999 dialling system? And so it came to pass that a device was invented the likes of which were not seen by the public until the ET film gave the game away. The ET "phone home" gadget made of an old record player and a circular saw blade wasn't that far from the truth. You may laugh but this was cutting edge technology (if you will pardon the pun) in its day.

When the alarm triggered it tripped a relay, which in turn fired an electric motor, which drove a mechanical device (not unlike the device in ET), which tripped the telephone line nine times, then waited and then did it again, and again. After that it fired up a record player deck with a pre- recorded seven inch vinyl disc saying something like "Emergency, emergency emergency, there is an intruder alarm activation at Joe Bloggs jewellers in the high street".

The police at this point (believe it or not) would drop what they were doing and run like hell to the premises to try and catch the thief. Yes, well, they could in those days. Alarm systems could be counted on one hand for a small town and false alarms were few and far between. The odds were in favour of collars being felt, so it was as many officers as possible on the scene.

And as it's still the panto season ... the conversation could run like this:
"You're nicked – and by the way that's a nasty lump you have on your head".

"What lump"? sayeth the criminal, "That one" said the constable who proceeded to point out the lump with the blunt end of his truncheon. Those were the days – a thief took his punishment like a man and the copper was allowed to get on with the job in hand.

Then came heavy lorries ...
But I digress – back to the dialling device. The engineer reset involved lifting the needle from the middle of the record back to the edge. This was fine until a heavy lorry passed by and vibrated the needle arm off the record, and then it was 999 followed by "scrape scrape scrape" of the needle dragging on the edge of the turntable, something had to be done! The continuous tape was the next stage of development – the 8-track in-car stereo tape as it was then known. This was a continuous tape in a cartridge and, for alarm purposes, it only used one track (the track switching device was disabled). By now the 999 was dialled by an electronic relay instead of a mechanical device but the advance in electronics was fouled by the upsurge in Citizen Band radio which had a bad habit of tripping every alarm for miles around. A conversation would be heard over the airwaves – "Breaker breaker 19 we have an alarm ringing in the high street, try to avoid the area or the feds will confiscate your CB." They had absolutely no idea that their own CB set was the one that triggered the alarm.

My close brush with the law
The police were not impressed but there was little that could be done. On the other hand, the number of times the police were called inadvertently when the engineer was testing the system was another matter. A rule was introduced where the alarm engineer had to book into the police station and register in advance when a test of the system was to take place. The idea was that if the police knew about it they would not send men and machines from miles around risking life and limb by crashing lights and crossings to get to an alarm test. Theoretically it was foolproof. In reality what happened was that between the county HQ and the local nick the message got lost in the system. So it was when I called in at one South Yorks police station to inform them as required and was met by a huge policewoman with the build of a Russian shot putter and a zero tolerance sense of humour.

The engineer ‘reset’ involved lifting the needle from the middle of the record back to the edge!

She looked me up and down:

"So you're going to test an alarm system – what do you want me to do about it"?

I said that I had been told to inform them.

"Well I know nowt about it so bugger off and stop wasting my time", she said.

I did. I tested the alarm and of course the police turned up with all lights flashing.

I have to say this was a hard time and the police (understandably) were getting quite shirty about it and threw the rulebook at me. Later, some forces insisted that you had to be in NACOSS, some introduced their own rules and started employing alarms inspectors. For the alarm company it was a nightmare. Equipment would false alarm for no apparent reason and, with each police force laying down its own rules, mistakes were made, misunderstandings were rife and many a good company was thrown off the police recognised list. A few bad companies got away with murder ... of course, the only infallible way to stop false alarms is to make sure the system does not work at all!

I am of the opinion that the late 80s /early 90s was a period of far more unrest than that created by DD243. We had some inferior equipment that caused random alarms and a different set of rules for each police force – it was mayhem, but eventually we pulled through. The manufacturers learned how to combat the growing menace of CB radios and later the analogue mobile phones. The panels and passives slowly but surely became very stable, the bad manufacturers went out of business and the better ones survived.

Installers learned to be more careful We, the installers, learned to be more careful how and where we fitted the systems and where not to run the wires. We learned how to suppress faults and make systems stable, and ACPO started to get its act together and form a unified policy to be adopted nationally. In fact, we were moving from a minefield to a level (or more or less level) playing field and at least there was an optimism in the industry – or so we thought.

This light at the end of the tunnel was, in fact, the burglar with his torch breaking in to yet another property and creating yet more need for communicated systems. The sheer increase in the number of communicated systems far outstripped the advances currently being made in the control of false alarms but the pendulum was swinging and the main causes of false alarms changed from being equipment and ignorance-related to mainly customer-related ... a problem which is still very much with us today. I think we would all agree that the biggest cause of false alarms is now customer related. Customers don't see the need to learn more about alarms. They memorize a code, learn how to set and unset and then their minds glaze over and they see any other problems as those of the alarm company.

Customers must be tackled!
I am convinced that this is the next big issue that the alarm companies will have to face. After all, DD243 has taken care of most if not all the other factors and I have to admit it is working. I will also admit that I was just as sceptical as the next man when it first came out. But it is a case of the more I learn and understand it, the more I see it making sense. Most companies have now got their heads round it and are pushing forward.

If life goes the normal way it runs to a pattern, and it is the same well-worn pattern with everything that touches our lives: First we complain like mad that whoever did it, wrote it, made it, or whatever with it had absolutely no idea.

Then we reluctantly start to do the thing and begin to see the reason behind it, and then we accept it. The next stage is the dangerous one ... we start to find ways round it.

We find ways to do what the rules tell us but in a way that suits us. We find ways to do it cheaper, and here we fall into the time-worn problem of finding ways to cut corners.

So here we are today: We have top class equipment, we have new standards that are reflecting the current problems and an industry that is growing and changing by the day.

Fair enough, the next generation will not have the same troubleshooting expertise that the last generation had (or have). But do they need it? Probably not. We can now send signals all over the world both by radio and via the Internet, we have standards and equipment that almost think for themselves and solve their own problems.