The Best of 1970
In the 1970 Motorola was not only selling its consoles, but a sophisticated--for the time--map and status board set-up that allowed agencies to more easily track units and incidents. It consisted of calltaker positions, a conveyor belt to transport incident cards to the radio dispatchers, a radio console (CentraCom), a set of slots to accept IBM cards and change status lights (tiny flashlight blubs, 3v), and the beat map console, which was about 4-feet wide and 3-feet tall. Each map was custom-made--no doubt by a Motorola subcontractor--very detailed, and silk-screened onto frosted Plexiglass. The maps reportedly cost $7,000 each. Here is a diagram of the map set-up:
The front Plexiglass overlay would be changed each time during the day that the beat configuration changed (usually the night shift had fewer beats). At the same time, the radio dispatcher would change a "plug block" at the back of the console to "re-wire" the status lights to display the correct set of red-green status lights for that beat configuration. The lights were connected to tiny switches at the bottom of slots in the radio console. Each slot corresponded to a unit you were tracking. When the slot was empty, the light was green. When you slipped an IBM incident card into the slot, the switch would change the light from green to red.
If the beat configurations ever needed changing due to staffing, population or crime changes, you could remove the beat overlay graphics (usually made with thin plastic adhesive tape or transparent plastic so you could see through to the map detail) from the Plexiglass sheet, and lay down the new configuration. You would then reposition the red-green lights by popping them out of the hole in the grid, and placing them at a new location. Their position within the beat was never precise--you couldn't predict where the grid would line up with the beat you drew on the front Plexiglass. Even so, the red-green lights displayed within the beat made it much easier to quickly see which units were available to handle an incident.
Interestingly, the Chicago Police Department used this same set-up, and used it very successfully to manage hundreds of field units. Of course, they had more than one radio dispatch position!
