Hotel Annunciator

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Hotel Annunciator; calls have been placed from rooms 9, 29, and 50

Draft of device, some historical info, etc.

The Tremont House

Boston, 1928-929. Located on Tremont Street in Boston, Massachusetts, The Tremont House is known as the first modern hotel, offering luxuries such as private rooms and á la cart dining (Morgenroth 137). One of the earliest hotel annunciators was introduced here, aiding a degree seclusion by allowing communication through walls and over the vertical and horizontal space of the building. The annunciator, patented by Seth Fuller, was a "bell system [which] enabled guests to call “rotunda men” to their rooms” (Berger). Essentially a system of hanging bells that connected to individual rooms, the main office could be alerted to a guest's needs through an electronically trigged ringing.

(remove?)["To learn, even in our era of consumer satiation, of the services and offerings of Tremont House brings on appetite and thirst, a wish to order a sumptuous meal that magically appears" (137). Also belonging to the Tremont House was one of the earliest hotel annunciators.Electric bells were among the main components of early annunciators.]

Design

What It Is

Annunciators are an electro-mechanized remediation of the domestic hand bell that was used to signal slaves, servants, or wait staff in the pre-Civil war United States (true?/source? even if not the following information can be applied to handbells in genreral). Essential changes in the structures of these two systems are dynamic and should be highlighted. Most notably, the struck bell which is the acoustic message has been removed from the perceivable field of the caller. This silence, or really lack of bell, removes the caller from his or her usual awareness of the communication; the receiver of the message not only retains perception of audible ringing, but has moved closer to the source—though the bell is now in the servant’s office, the caller’s ghostly hand still controls its rattle. Immobility of the bell also fragments the dual position it once held. Sound waves produced by hand bells not only announce a particular, preconceived message (lunch time, one is needed, etc.), they also indicate the location of the caller by direction and distance. The hotel annunciator’s bell need only convey that a message has been sent due to the ‘screen’ of the device, which has coded the location of all callers in the system by number.

The basic annunciator in lC19 consists of a bell fixed to an often ornate wooden box that stores the receiver’s mechanization and frames its visual interface. The face is divided into discrete units, each comprised of a linguistic or numeral signifier representing the location of a calling device and an armature capable of rest in two positions, one indicating a call. When a call button is depressed, two types of data are transmitted simultaneously by the annunciator through two binary codes, one visual and one aural. Dormancy and silence indicate that no external message is being conveyed to the central hub. A call closes the electrical circuit; the struck or vibrating bell audibly announces a change in the visible structure’s information, which has shifted an individual annunciating unit’s lever from one position to a second.

"To wire for a return call annunciator, the best plan to follow is to use three colors of insulated wire. One wire, a red one, can be run from one side of the battery to all places where push-buttons are to be. A second wire from the battery (a blue wire), to one side of all the bell connections. ...Now a third color wire (either black or white--these are the two best colors), should be run, one wire from each place to where the two wires are, to where the annunciator is to be located; remember, one separate wire from each place to the annunciator. Should you wire for a fifty number annunciator you would have one red wire, one blue wire, and fifty black or white wires at the place the annunciator was to be" (48).

How It Works

Electric Annunciators were utilized in a variety of different locations. Most often found in hotels, offices or houses, they were essentially installed wherever a number of "signaling stations" were needed to signal one centric location. "The Annunciator can be made for as many indications as desired, and is so constructed that when a push-button is pressed, the bell on the annunciator rings, and an indicating needle, drop, or some other device will show from where the call, or signal came. There is but one bell to the annunciator, but the number of indications is never limited" (41-42).

If an attendant was not near enough to hear the bell, the armature would be held into place by its own weight and convey the message that a call had been placed from the room indicated. The visual aspect serves as a necessary reminder. In this sense, it is true "a good, substantially made pendulum indicator is so much to be preferred to any kind that requires a shutter or vane to be replaced by the attendant before it can be used again, as with the almost incessant ringing of bells in a large hotel the most careful of servants will repeatedly forget to replace the shutters" (Allsop 113). This feature of the device is mentioned by a number of sources as being especially useful in dealing with a “forgetful” wait staff. On a ship’s annunciator: “One great advantage to this contrivance is that should the servant fail to hear the bell he can always tell by looking at “indicator,” whether his services are needed.” 2*

"In case no answer is returned, it is usually found that the person desired was not about at the time"

"When it is desired to receive signals from a number of push buttons located at different points throughout a building, the wires from the buttons are terminated in a device that gives the signal and indicates the origin of the call. This device is called an annunciator. An annunciator consists of a number of drops that are operated through magnets. The current from the calling push buttons passes through the magnet, causing it to move an indicating device to show the call. The indication is shown by a drop, shutter, needle, or lamp. There is also a bell or buzzer connected to the circuit. [more to added]" (14).

Reset Function

"When an indicating device once indicates for a call, it should again be placed to its natural position. Some of the annunciators are arranged so that the indications are placed in their natural position by a mechanical device. Some are reset by pressing a push-button on the annunciator, and the resetting is done by electricity. Others are so made that the last place called or signaled from resets any indicating device that may be out of its natural position and leaves only the indication which was used or called last" (42).

Annunciator Sign System

Zeilinski notes that techniques for the initiation of “microevents in distant places with the aid of electrocircuits,” had been devised and demonstrated in eC19 (182). The use of a bell to signal something which is somehow outside of content, a message which concerns itself not with the text but the form of the text is exhibited in these early devices “A further wire, connected to the clapper of a bell, existed to signal the beginning and end of a message” (182), referring to Soemmering’s early 1800s telegraph, with a different wire for each letter, bubbles.


Further Remediations

"New forms of annunciators are made for recording degrees of temperature, for time signaling service, on street and steam railways, etc. Another comparatively new commercial use of the annunciator is for keeping and recording engagements, especially designed for hotel and livery stable service" (459).

Another variation of the annunciator is found in Knights American Mechanical Dictionary: “The chamber of the guest and the hotel office are each provided with an indexed gauge, consisting of a hollow tube containing a colored liquid. At the back of each tube is a graduated index marked at intervals, “fire,” “light,” “water,” “brandy,” “towels,” etc., as may suit the average of customers. The respective tubes are connected by an air pipe, into which air is injected by the guest, to raise the liquid in the respective tubes to the point which indicates his wants.” (117)


Title

Luxury and Service

"The annunciators were all framed in wooden cases of desirable style and finish" (459).

Immediacy

Safety

Privacy

Sources

2*Headline: Arrival of the America. 7 Days Later from Europe; Article Type: News/Opinion Paper: Southern Patriot, published as The Southern Patriot; Date: 10-02-1848; Volume: LX; Issue: 9653; Page: [2];