New Bell Will Sound Alarm

The Register-Leader, January 9, 1907

At a special meeting of the Board of Public Safety held Tuesday evening in the Mayor's office, it was decided to place the fire alarm bell, which will be purchased, in the tower of the City Building, and in probably two weeks, the locations of fires may again be told by the numbers tapped the bell.

Bids for the bell were submitted by four local hardware firms, all on a bell made by the C. S. Bell Co., of Hillsboro, Ohio, and the bid of Seyler Brothers being the lowest, it was accepted, while Levi Cowell, having submitted the lowest bid for placing the bell in position, was given the contract of installing it in the tower.

It will be a steel alloy alarm bell, will be four feet in diameter at the bottom and will weigh about 2,000 pounds.

Before the bell is accepted Messrs. Holst and Kaiser will go to Cincinnati to inspect it and the trip will probably be made the latter part of this week.

The Board expects to have the bell here and erected in the tower in two weeks. The bell will cost $106.00 and the cost of placing it in the tower will be $75, which figures being in accordance with the lowest bids furnished at the meeting Tuesday evening. H. P. Theis, The Union Hardware and M. A Kropp were the other bidders to furnish the bell.

Other business of importance was up for consideration at the meeting, and it was decided to have the fire wagon of the West Side company completely repaired and repainted, the work to be done by J. H. Oesterle, who built the new wagon. While the new work is being done, the old wagon, which was in department No. 1, will be used on the West Side.

In the future, four chemicals will be carried on each wagon instead of two as heretofore and an extra supply of chemicals will be ordered at once.