- The earliest American fire alarm came in 1658, when New York's first fire department employed eight men. Nightly, the "firemen" walked the streets checking for fires. Adopted by American communities, shortly after its invention by Australians in the 1850s, the hand-shaken wooden rattle alarm awoke people from impending harm.
- Using telegraph technology of 1852, William F. Channing and Moses Farmer designed two fire alarm boxes with each containing a telegraphic key. With reporting a neighborhood fire, the person cranks the attached handle on the box releasing the key to send out a message of the box number to a central alarm station. Upon receiving the message, the telegrapher at central headquarters sent the corresponding address of the box location to the fire department response team.
- Commercial, new construction and mobile home manufacturers embraced the first AC battery powered smoke detectors during the 1970s. Residential sales of the same type smoke alarm brought new companies into the industry. An estimated 92 percent of all American homes had smoke detectors by 1993.
- In 2009, Dr. David Albert Dr. David Albert, a research scientist and biomedical engineer as well as medical doctor, released his invention to assist people unable to awaken from the standard chirping or light-based residential smoke and fire alarms. The new system "listens" for the sound of the regular fire alarm then sends its own signal to the bed. Sleepers feel forceful intermittent vibrations throughout the bed from part of the device. The target groups benefiting from this fire alarm system include hearing impaired, older adults, heavy sleepers, and those who use sleep medications.
- The 21st century offer new technologies for fire alarm systems working without wires. Digital communicator systems, private radio systems and cellular transmitters are operable from the location of the user.
