I remember seeing a bunch of these red fire alarm boxes around the Boston area in the 80s and blue police boxes as well. They must all have been obsolete and it took me a while to learn what they were (I never asked an old person so nobody I asked really knew beyond what you could divine from inspection. Only now do I know why they are locked. Which was a bit of a mystery!
I was once recruited by a consulting firm that developed the control center for the SFFD, and visited the command center. They had computers listening to the pull box circuits and displaying box locations, but they kept the wind-up Morse inker to put dashes on a paper tape, and its bell, in case that failed. That was pre-cell phone, though.
In some cities including Boston itself, it’s not the Fd that resets it but the fire alarm company of record(I work for one) who also gets a call. The possible issue is if another alarm comes in before the tech arrives it will not report to the FD again.
