“Auto Call” burglar alarm, Kensington and Chelsea • As 2011 (which still sounds like a science fiction date to me) draws to a close, I’m presenting a selection of extra-vintage bell boxes to ring out the old year. All but one have three-letter phone exchange codes, which were phased out around 1966, making them at least 45 years old. This is a beautiful old design, whose prefix CHA denotes Chancery, in the Holborn area. Only six cities – London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester – had these alphabetical codes: they were known as the Director cities, named after the switching equipment which controlled their exchanges, according to this very informative phone-geekery website. I’ve found a similar Auto Call box in York too, which being outside the Director area, has the full city name before its phone number, reading LEEDS 22828. • Spotted: Beauchamp Place, Kensington and Chelsea, London, SW3, England, 2011 • Politics: In the Conservative constituency of Kensington
Little bit of info on the autocall company,and system,three of the main people were,peter eyre,peter towle,and william McPhaill Better Known as
(Willie MacPhaill} he joined autocall and shortly afterwords acquired control of the company.
He carries through a lot of first in the alarm industry,The reverse takeover,and capitalisation of rented equipment.
Soon afterwards he aquired (AFA) automatic fire alarms, then brought autocall into the AFA fold, he also bought of alarm companies,and added them into AFA.Soon after aquiring AFA he listed the company
in the stock exchange,this was around 1960 I believe.I believe the stock market listing was not a success,and AFA went through a bad time
1965 reported in the press AFA had a loss of £865K that year a lot of money in these days.Mr MacPhaill steps down and is replaced by
Mr.Ian morrow. As you can see AFA had a rough ride in 64/65s
Remember coming in contact with some autocall system,when I was with AFA in 68 The outside bell boxes were a block of wood with gent tangent
hammer bell,metal cover,with anti tamper loop througgh holes in box
The internal control box was fitted high up inside the premises.
there was inside a bakalite board.with two relays and a row of brass screw terminals to connect your circuit and bells
A conduit drop from there to a wooden base, there fitted a switch and keylock,The keylock was ( like a small yale drawer lock ) which came in conntact with a brass or copper contact.The system was bell setting,if a 9999 autodialler was in use a chubb mortise shunt ( Internal microswitch)
was used in the system.This was a very old system,but there were many still around and working well.Hope this may be of interest
yours R.wightman
Hi I was wondering if you could tell me how many copper screws there was in the auto call system.
You would have thought that any property in Beauchamp Place just down the road from Harrods and in an area of London mostly owned by the royal family of UAE they could afford a new box
Yeah, they probably just shoot burglars. Anyway I’m glad for the sake of my blog those old alarms are there (there’s another from the same wall tomorrow).
Wow, this is an old bell box. Auto call, along with Sentinal and the Clarion Burglar Aarm Company were aquired by AFA